Edith Farkas
Antarctic researcher & meteorologist
Edith Elizabeth Farkas (13 October 1921 – 3 February 1993) was a New Zealand Antarctic researcher, best known for being the first Hungarian woman and also the first New Zealand MetService female staff member to set foot in Antarctica. In addition she conducted world-leading ozone monitoring research for over 30 years.
Early life and education
Edit Farkas was born on 13 October 1921 in Gyula, Hungary. She attended elementary and secondary schooling in Szentgotthárd and Győr, Budapest. In 1939, Farkas entered university and graduated in 1944 with a degree as a mathematics and physics teacher from Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Budapest. She emigrated to New Zealand as a refugee in 1949, after the war, where she completed a MSc Degree in Physics in 1952 at Victoria University of Wellington.
Career and impact
Farkas was a meteorologist, ozone researcher. She started working as a meteorologist in the Research Section of the New Zealand Meteorological Service in 1951 where she continued to do so for some 35 years.
Farkas monitored ozone from the 1950s until her retirement in 1986, undertaking world-leading research in the field of ozone monitoring over more than three decades. During 1960s her work shifted increasingly to the study of atmospheric ozone including the measurement of total ozone with the Dobson ozone spectrophotometer.
The public source identifies “Edith Farkas” as antarctic researcher & meteorologist. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Edith, Farkas and Antarctic.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q26399689. The first chronological checks are 1921, 1993, 1939 and 1944.
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This entry incorporates text from “Edith Farkas” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.