Jane Soons

Jane Margaret Soons (18 June 1931 – 8 September 2020) was a New Zealand geomorphologist and pioneering role model for female students. In 1971, she was the first woman professor at the University of Canterbury, and possibly the first in New Zealand.

Biography Soons was born on 18 June 1931, and grew up in a council cottage in the small English village of Great Gonerby. Her father, Lewin Soons, worked for the railways. He was a good trade unionist and loved reading books. Her mother, Jenny, was a hard worker. After Lewin became bedridden with tuberculosis, Jenny took over tending their large vegetable garden and orchard that provided a little income. At age eleven, Soons won a scholarship to Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School and started in the third form the year that Margaret Thatcher was a prefect at the school.

Subsequently, in 1958, she became one of the first woman PhD graduates in geography at the University of Glasgow. After tutoring at two British universities, she became fed-up with being overlooked for higher academic positions, due to what she described as "an inbred feeling that this was not a women’s world".

She is remembered by her students and colleagues for her kindness, praise and genuine support of their work, as well as her enthusiastic lectures and mentoring of young geomorphologists and future generations of female scientists. Other highlights of her distinguished careers include being president of the International Union of Quaternary Research and convenor of the National Committee for Quaternary Research for the Royal Society.

Recognition

Erskine Fellowship 1975 David Livingstone Centenary Medal for Southern Hemisphere research (awarded by the American Geographical Society) 1988 Royal Society Silver Medal 1994 Honorary Doctor of Science from University of Glasgow 2009 Distinguished New Zealand Medal (awarded by the New Zealand Geographical Society) 2001 In 2017 Soons 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. The University of Canterbury renamed the Geography Building to Jane Soons in her honour in June 2021.

Selected publications

Rainfall/runoff relationships at Cass, in the South Island high country, 1970, N.Z. Hydrological Society, National Library of New Zealand Catalogue Recent changes in the Franz Josef glacier, 1971, New Zealand Geographical Society, University of Canterbury Library Water: with reference to Australia and New Zealand, 1972, Reed Education, Wellington N.Z., , , National Library of New Zealand Catalogue co-authored with Michael Selby, Landforms of New Zealand, Longman Paul, Auckland, N.Z, 1982, , , National Library of New Zealand Catalogue Jubilee cookbook: fifty recipes for fifty years, 1986, Department of Geography, University of Canterbury, (a booklet of recipes shared by visitors to the Department of Geography, compiled for the department's 50th Jubilee celebrations), National Library of New Zealand Catalogue Jobberns, George, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, first published in 1998. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand