Eliza Amy Hodgson

Eliza Amy Hodgson ( Campbell, 10 October 1888 – 7 January 1983) was a New Zealand botanist who specialised in liverworts.

Early life Hodgson was born in Havelock North and attended Pukahu Primary School and Napier Girls' High School. She went by her middle name Amy. Hodgson was self-educated in botany as her father refused to allow her to attend university. Following advice from Sainsbury in 1928, Hodgson purchased her first microscope. This led to her novel observations of gemmae in Tortula abruptinervis, which was the subject of her first scientific paper, published at the age of 42. In the course of her career she described two new families of liverworts (Acrobolbaceae; still retained, and Phyllothalliaceae; now included in Pallaviciniaceae), nine new genera, and published many new species and systematic changes to those existing. Hodgson was also an honorary member of the British Bryological Society.

Hodgson was awarded an honorary doctorate by Massey University in 1976.

In 2017, Hodges was selected as one of the Royal Society Te Apārangi's "150 women in 150 words", celebrating the contributions of women to knowledge in New Zealand.