Mary Earle

Mary Davidson Earle ( Cameron; 20 October 1929 – 18 April 2021) was a Scottish-born New Zealand food technologist. She was the first female faculty member of a university engineering department in New Zealand when she joined Massey University's food technology department in 1965. Early life Earle was born Mary Davidson Cameron on 20 October 1929 in Banavie near Ben Nevis in Scotland, the daughter of Ronald Cameron. She studied chemical engineering at the University of Glasgow, and completed her PhD in food science there in 1957. The title of her doctoral thesis was The purification of soya lipoxidase. She then worked in product development in the British food industry for five years. While studying at Glasgow, she met her husband, Richard Lawrence Earle, who was also undertaking doctoral studies there, and the couple married in 1961. Career in New Zealand After moving to New Zealand in 1961, Mary Earle began work at New Zealand's Meat Industry Research Institute. She joined the staff of Massey University Food Technology Department in 1965, becoming the first female engineering academic in New Zealand. Her early work was adding rigour to the university's graduate course in food technology, which had been established the year before she joined Massey. In time she would develop the Food Technology Research Centre, which made the university's resources available to industry.