Dr. G. V. Buchanan

Abstract

DR. GWYNNETH VAUGHAN BUCHANAN, senior lecturer in zoology at the University of Melbourne, died towards the end of June 1945. Dr. Buchanan was born in Sydney in November 1886, and was educated at Toorak College and the University of Melbourne. For a time she acted as professor of zoology in the University of Western Australia before she returned to her old university as senior lecturer under Sir Baldwin Spencer. To English zoologists she is perhaps best known for her outstanding work on the development of the marsupials, undertaken in conjunction with Dr. Elizabeth Frazer at University College, London, in 1918. In Australia, the great influence for good that she exercised on the many students to whom she was so much more than a mere university teacher will long be remembered. It was largely owing to her influence and enthusiasm that the McCoy Society for Field Investigation and Research came into being and became such an outstanding success. After some months of ill-health, bravely borne, she retired from active teaching in February of this year, but until the last she continued her enormous correspondence with old students scattered, by the War, to distant parts of the world.