Sarah Octavia Brennan

Sarah Octavia Brennan became Sister Mary Elizabeth (14 April 1867 – 8 January 1928) was an Australian Good Samaritan Sister and teacher.

Life Brennan was born in 1867 on the Australian coast at Moruya. Her parents were Elizabeth (born McKeon) and Martin Brennan were both Irish immigrants in 1859. Her father was in the police and he was one of the guards looking after the transportation of gold. He and Elizabeth had only one child and that was Sarah Olivia. and two years later she passed her masters in history and philology with her father still following her studies. After a gap, she went again to the university and between 1894 and 1897 she took a BSc. She was an early woman science graduate as the first Australian woman to receive a science degree was Fanny Hunt in 1888.

She was a member of the Naturalists Society of New South Wales and she wrote a paper on her dissections of the Australian earthworm that was read to the Linnean Society in 1900 .

Brennan was involved as a teacher in improving the teaching of Science at Saint Scholastica's College in Sydney

Brennan died in 1928 in Lewisham.