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John Peter Bollons was born at Bethnal Green, London, England, on 10 November 1862, the son of Thomas Bollons, a cab master, and his wife, Helen Elisha. His mother was Jewish but Bollons was brought up as an Anglican.…

Born in New Plymouth on 24 February 1918, Daniel Anthony Watkins was the fifth child and third son of Augustus Edward Watkins, a self-employed accountant, and his wife, Alice Mary Kyngdon. He attended West End School…

Herbert Ellery Gilbert was born in Whanganui on 20 July 1916. His New Zealand-born father, Ellery George Gilbert, imported musical instruments; his mother, Nellie Gilbert (née Hall), was English-born. After attending…

John McKenzie left school at the age of 13 to deliver newspapers. When he died, he was reputed to be one of New Zealand's wealthiest men. He contributed in excess of £1 million to New Zealand charities in his lifetime;…

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…

Donald Frederick Wünsch was born on 16 January 1887 at Chorlton on Medlock, Manchester, England, the eldest son of Mary Sandys and her husband, Edward Wünsch, a shipping merchant. After going to school in Manchester, he…

Carl Axel Björk was born in Hedvig Eleonora parish, Stockholm, Sweden, on 5 August 1880. His mother was a 29-year-old unmarried seamstress, Johanna Sofia Björk. The identity of his father was not recorded. When Carl was…

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…

Gilbert Edward Archey was born in Marygate, York, England, on 4 August 1890, the son of Thomas Archey, a schoolmaster, and his wife, Sarah Triffitt. In 1892 the family emigrated to New Zealand, where Thomas held several…

Ralph Hōtere was one of New Zealand’s most important late twentieth-century artists. He began as a painter with a strong drawing practice, later moving into sculpture and installation. His work reflected an abstract…

John Dunstan Atkinson was born in Wellington on 3 March 1909, the son of Mary Herrick Hursthouse and her husband, Samuel Arnold Atkinson, a solicitor. To his immediate family he was known as Dunstan, but because of his…

Robert Agrippa Moengaroa Waitiri (later Whaitiri), commonly known as Bob, was born in Bluff, Southland, on 9 May 1916. Through his parents, Robert Agrippa Waitiri, an oysterman, and his wife, Mariam (Miriam) Effie Te…

Fritz Langbein (known as Fred to the family) was born in Nelson on 15 March 1891, the son of Frederick John Langbein, a commercial traveller and farmer, and his wife, Mary Ross. Educated at Nelson College, he joined the…

Henry Rodolph Wigley was born at Fairlie, South Canterbury, on 2 February 1913, the eldest son of Jessie Christie Grant and her husband, Rodolph Lysaght Wigley, a mail contractor, and later an airline operator. Harry…

Frederick Henry McDowall, one of a small group of pioneering scientists in the dairy-processing industry of New Zealand, was born at Waianiwa, near Invercargill, Southland, on 1 September 1900. His parents, Montgomery…

Francis Vernon Douglas was born in Johnsonville, near Wellington, on 22 May 1910, the fifth of eight children (five sons and three daughters) of Kathleen Gaffney and her husband, George Charles Douglas, an Australian-…

Johann Karl Ernst Dieffenbach is said to have been born at Giessen in the Grand Duchy of Hesse on 27 January 1811. The son of a respected Protestant cleric and professor of theology at the university of Giessen, Ernst…

Clinton Coleridge Farr was born in Adelaide, South Australia, probably on 22 May 1866, the son of George Henry Farr and his wife, Julia Warren Ord. His father, an ordained Anglican priest, was headmaster of St Peter's…

Hilda Beatrice Herbert was born in Vauxhall, London, England, on 17 February 1864, one of nine children of Louisa Hopgood and her husband, George William Herbert, an Anglican vicar. Artistic from an early age, she…

Leonard Aloysius Patrick Malaghan was born in Queenstown on 18 February 1906, the son of Patrick Thomas Malaghan, a storeman, and his wife, Nellie Tucker. His father was a talented photographer – he later turned…