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Carmen Rupe was a trailblazing transgender woman and entertainer, a larger-than-life personality, sex worker, and celebrated LGBTIQ+ icon. Proprietor of several notorious Wellington nightspots and one-time mayoral…

Beatrice Hill Tinsley was an English-born, New Zealand-educated, theoretical astrophysicist and cosmologist. Through her research in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, she proved that the universe was infinite…

Margaret Mahy is New Zealand’s most celebrated writer for children and young adults. In a 55-year career she published more than 120 titles: novels, picture books, short stories, poems and educational texts, as well as…

Wī Pere was born on 7 March 1837 at Tūranga (Gisborne), the son of Poverty Bay trader Thomas Halbert and Rīria Mauaranui, Halbert's fourth wife. Rīria was a woman of considerable mana, predominantly of Te Whānau-a-Kai…

Les Cleveland made important contributions to New Zealand’s visual, musical, literary and academic culture. There were overlaps, continuities and connections between all his diverse interests, which ranged from the…

In the second half of the twentieth century, Keith Sinclair transformed how New Zealanders understood themselves and their history. A prominent poet and New Zealand’s most important historian of the 1950s and 1960s, his…

Content warning: This page contains information that readers may find confronting or distressing, including references to the sexual abuse of children. Commune leader Bert Potter was one of late-twentieth-century New…

Edward James Te Āika Tregerthen, later known as Eruera Tīhema Tirikātene, was born on 5 January 1895 at Te Rakiwhakaputa pā near Kaiapoi. His father, a carpenter, later a skipper of boats, wheat farmer and minister of…

Walter Nash was born in Kidderminster, Worcestershire, England, on 12 February 1882, the fifth of six children of Alfred Arthur Nash and his wife, Amelia Randle. The family was poor and Alfred was often drunk. A rug…

Rua Kēnana, sometimes known as Ruatapunui, has usually been considered to be the posthumous son of Kēnana Tūmoana of Ngāti Kahungunu, who was killed fighting for Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Tūruki at Mākāretu sometime…

Edward William Stafford was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on 23 April 1819, eldest son of Berkeley Buckingham Smith Stafford of Maine, County Louth, Ireland, and his wife, Anne Tytler. Stafford grew up in the leisured,…

Te Rangitāke is thought to have been born in the last years of the eighteenth century, at Manukorihi pā, Waitara. He was of Ngāti Kura and Ngāti Mutunga descent, and is primarily identified with Te Āti Awa. His father…

William Fox was born at Westoe, Durham, England, and was baptised on 2 September 1812 at South Shields. He was the third of five surviving sons of George Townshend Fox and his wife, Ann Stote Crofton. His father was a…

Michael King was New Zealand’s most popular late twentieth-century historian. His best work combined the research-based scholarship of a historian with the fluent accessible style of a journalist. His output was…

Tītokowaru was born near Ōkaiawa, in South Taranaki, probably about 1823. He belonged to Ngāti Manuhiakai hapū of Ngā Ruahine, a section of Ngāti Ruanui. He traced his descent from Turi and Rongorongo, and from…

George Grey is believed to have been born in Lisbon, Portugal, on 14 April 1812. His father, Lieutenant Colonel George Grey, had been killed eight days before, during an attack by the Duke of Wellington's army on…

Paul Holmes was New Zealand’s best-known and most influential late twentieth-century broadcaster, straddling the line between serious current affairs presenter and entertainer. He succeeded in the three mass media…

Joseph George Ward (registered at birth as Joseph Ward) was born in Hawke Street, North Melbourne, Australia, on 26 April 1856, the son of Irish immigrant parents William Ward, a clerk, and his wife, Hannah Dorney.…