Margaret di Menna
New Zealand microbiologist, first NZ woman PhD
Margaret Elaine di Menna (8 July 1923 – 24 March 2014) was a New Zealand microbiologist. In 1954 she became the first woman to gain a Doctor of Philosophy degree from a New Zealand university. Her doctoral thesis at the University of Otago was entitled Yeasts of the human body, their nature and relationship. She had previously graduated with a MSc(Hons) from the same institution in 1948.
In 1990, di Menna was awarded the New Zealand 1990 Commemoration Medal, and in the 1997 New Year Honours, she was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to microbiology. In 2011, the reading room at Abbey College at the University of Otago was named in her honour. She was a prominent member of Zonta International.
She died in Hamilton in 2014.
“Margaret di Menna” enters the record as new Zealand microbiologist, first NZ woman PhD. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Margaret, Menna and Zealand can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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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 Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16019676. VIAF identifies the subject as 290219503. The Library of Congress control number is n78046758. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1923, 2014, 1954 and 1948.
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This entry incorporates text from “Margaret di Menna” 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.