Kathleen Curtis
New Zealand botanist and mycologist (1892-1994)
Kathleen Maisey Curtis, Lady Rigg (15 August 1892 – 5 September 1994) was a New Zealand mycologist and was a founder of plant pathology in New Zealand.
Biography
Early life and education
Curtis was born in Foxton on 15 August 1892 and was educated at Lyttelton West School from 1899 to 1902, Auckland Girls' Grammar School and Auckland University College. She graduated in 1914 with a BA with a Senior Scholarship in botany, and in 1915 was awarded an MA with first-class honours in botany. As a result of the high quality of her academic work she was awarded the 1851 Exhibition Scholarship. Curtis was also awarded the Orient Steam Navigation Company's travelling scholarship, which paid her fare to the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London, and the National Research Scholarship, which she declined. As a result of these awards she was able to travel to London in 1915 to further her study. The Exhibition Scholarship was later extended.
Curtis was the first New Zealand woman to graduate with a DSc. Her degree was gained in 1919 at Imperial College London for research on the potato wart disease (Synchytrium endobioticum). She was awarded the Huxley Medal for her thesis research, which was cited as the most outstanding result in mycological research that had been presented for ten years.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Kathleen Curtis” is new Zealand botanist and mycologist (1892-1994). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Kathleen, Curtis and Zealand, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6376816. VIAF identifies the subject as 12055641. The Library of Congress control number is no2006028607. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1892, 1994, 1899 and 1902.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kathleen Curtis” 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.