Josephine Gordon Rich

Josephine Gordon Rich later Haswell (1866–1940) was a New Zealand zoologist and one of only four New Zealand women who published results of her scientific work before 1901.

Early life and education Rich was born in 1866 in Spaxton, England, the youngest of five children of William Gordon Rich (1829–1912) and his wife. Her father was a runholder and Justice of the Peace in Southland, but Gordon Rich was born in England, where the family may have travelled for the education of Josephine's older brothers. Rich was a grand-daughter of early Otago politician John Richardson.

Scientific work In 1891, Rich achieved the highest grade in all her first year classes in zoology, botany, general biology, and practical biology from the University of Otago. Rich does not appear to have graduated despite her high grades, but this may be because she was not eligible to graduate, having been homeschooled. The paper described in detail the entire musculature of the animal; it was read before the Otago Institute in 1892 and published in the Maclay Memorial Volume of the New South Wales Linnean Society in 1893. Rich provided 25 of the 27 images in the paper, which were described as "remarkably clear" by a reviewer in the London review journal Natural Science. Haswell was a professor of biology at the University of Sydney, and although Rich does not appear to have published after her marriage, she assisted her husband in his work.

In 2017, she was featured as one of the Royal Society Te Apārangi's 150 women in 150 words.