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 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.

While studying at Glasgow, she met her husband, Richard Lawrence Earle, who was also undertaking doctoral studies there, Her early work was adding rigour to the university's graduate course in food technology, They established scholarship and grant programmes to support students, particularly women, in engineering and technology, and founded the Earle Creativity and Development Trust to develop and nurture science and technology, the visual and fine arts, literature and history, and music in the Manawatū and Rangitīkei regions. In 1992, Earle was elected an honorary fellow of the New Zealand Institution of Engineers. and the same year she was one of 544 recipients of the New Zealand Suffrage Centennial Medal.

In 2018, Earle was conferred with an honorary Doctor of Science degree by Massey University. She also received an honorary doctorate from Khon Kaen University in Thailand, and was an honorary fellow of the Institute of Food Science & Technology.