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Robin Williams was an influential administrator who helped shape New Zealand’s late twentieth century public service. His ability as a mathematician earned him a place in the Manhattan Project in California, part of the…

Bill Wilson was a key figure in Group Architects, an Auckland collective instrumental in developing a modern architecture responsive to New Zealand’s culture and conditions. This interest informed the buildings he…

Robert Stout was born on 28 September 1844 at Lerwick, Shetland, Scotland, the eldest of the six children of Thomas Stout, a merchant, and his wife, Margaret Smith. His education began at kindergarten at about the age…

Industrial designer James Coe was a passionate advocate of applied ergonomics, the design of products to suit human anatomy and activities. Coe developed the secondary school art curriculum after the Second World War,…

Tony Druce was New Zealand’s pre-eminent twentieth-century field botanist. Over his lifetime he built up an extensive knowledge of New Zealand’s flora, through his many tramping trips, close observation of plants and…

Bill Haythornthwaite was a pioneer of commercial art and design, advertising and visual communications in New Zealand. His company, W. Haythorn-thwaite Ltd, best known for the posters it designed for Tasman Empire…

Maata Horomona was New Zealand’s first movie star, as the leading lady in films by French filmmaker Gaston Méliès. Méliès claimed to have discovered her, but by 1912, when she appeared in three of his films, Maata was…

According to his monument at Papawai, Hāmuera Tamahau Mahupuku was born on 25 September 1840. Other sources state that he was born in 1837, or in 1842. He was known to Europeans as Sam, and to Māori and in official…

William Mason was a prominent mid-twentieth-century New Zealand artist and designer best known for his riotous, high-style handprinted interior textiles, and for wallpapers that helped  radically reform the way New…

Alister Donald Miles McIntosh was born at Picton on 29 November 1906, the eldest of four children of Henry Hobson McIntosh, a telegraphist, and his wife, Caroline Margaret Cowles Miles. From 1920 to 1924 he was educated…

Howard Morrison was one of the most beloved New Zealand entertainers of the second half of the twentieth century. A household name from the 1960s, both as a member of the Howard Morrison Quartet and as a solo performer…

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on 25 May 1846 to a wealthy family belonging to the Scottish gentry, Elizabeth Grace Campbell (known as Grace) was the daughter of James Archibald Campbell and his second wife, Maria Grace…

James Shelley was born on 3 September 1884 in Coventry, Warwickshire, England. His father, also James, was a potter turned policeman; his mother, Ellen Walton, was a weaver's daughter. From this artisan culture – which…

Tūhawaiki, known as Hone or John Tūhawaiki, and called 'Bloody Jack' by the sealers of Foveaux Strait, was the leader of Ngāi Tahu in Murihiku (the southern part of the South Island) from the death of Te Whakataupuka,…

Francis Dillon Bell, usually called Dillon, is said to have been born in France on 8 October 1822. His father, Edward Bell, was a merchant and the British consul at Bordeaux. His mother, Frances, was the daughter of an…

Bruce Biggs had a distinguished career as a scholar but he was also that rarer thing, an exceptional builder of academic institutions. In academic Māori studies he was the most influential figure of the twentieth…

Youth Sonja Margaret Loveday Vile was born on 11 November 1923 in Wallaceville, Upper Hutt. Her mother, Gwladys Ilma Vile, was a state-registered nurse; her father was Gerald Dempsey, an army major from Cork, Ireland…

Patrick Hodgens Hickey was born on a backblocks farm at the junction of the Wangapeka and Motueka rivers in Nelson, New Zealand, on 19 January 1882. He was the fourth of seven children of Irish Catholic immigrants…

According to family information, Maihi Parāone Kawiti was born in the Bay of Islands at Waiōmio, the cradle of Ngāti Hine, in 1807; his name at birth was Te Kūhanga. He was the third and youngest son of the chief Te…

Heinrich Arnold Nordmeyer, later known as Arnold Henry Nordmeyer, was born at Dunedin on 7 February 1901, the son of Arnold Nordmeyer, a German seaman who worked on a gold dredge at Alexandra, and his wife, Martha Dunn…