World-changing New Zealanders
Featuring 40+ definitive short biographies of New Zealanders who have changed or benefitted the world in some way. Working from New Zealand and internationally, these scientists, artists, designers, inventors, warriors, and adventurers are inspiration for achievement. Please enjoy and be motivated.
Kate Sheppard
Kate Sheppard was the leader and figurehead of the suffragist movement in New Zealand, which became the first country to grant universal suffrage, and became a source of inspiration to suffragists throughout the world…
Rewi Alley
Rewi Alley: social reformer, educator, fireman, writer, poet, translator, great internationalist, industrialist, revered citizen, potter, hero and friend of China. He is “unique for achieving greatness in a country where few foreigners ever manage to achieve a ripple"…
Rewi Alley Postscript
In November of 2002 a book on Rewi Alley, Friend of China – The Myth of Rewi Alley, by Anne-Marie Brady (Routledge Curzon, $102.95) was published. A series of reviews followed, responding to Brady’s revision of Alley’s character and the mythology surrounding …
Harold Williams
Harold Williams is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's greatest linguist, said to have spoken over 58 languages fluently. He was foreign editor of The Times, “the most brilliant foreign correspondent" his generation had known…
Te Rangi Hiroa / Peter Buck
Peter Buck’s achievements are astonishing for their diversity: pioneering anthropologist, the first Maori medical doctor, politician, administrator, soldier, sportsperson and leader of the Maori people. Through exploring the cross-cultural advantages…
Ettie Rout
Ettie Rout was infamous for breaching social norms in sexual health and practice while working in Paris during WWI. An original career woman, Ettie Rout was a humanitarian who faced danger, ostracism and eventually exile…
