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Rewi Alley (helped rebuild China after the revolution, we live in his house)
Chris Amon (motor racing)
Robert Davidson (apiarist)
Sir Roger Douglas (accounting?)
Sir Harold Gillies (pioneering plastic surgeon, 1)
Ernest Godward (inventor of the carburettor)
Sir Edmund Hillary (mountaineering, aid work, ambassador)
Fred Hollows (eye surgeon, honorary Australian?)
Dennis Hulme (motor racing)
Vaughan Jones (mathematics, Fields Medal winner (theory of knots))
Sir Archibald McIndoe (pioneering plastic surgeon, 1)
Bruce McLaren (motor racing)
Colin Murdoch (inventor of the disposable syringe)
Richard Pearse (first powered flight (probably))
Lord [Ernest] Rutherford, 1st Baron of Nelson and Cambridge (Nobel Prize,
 Chemistry, 2), (1871-1937)
Mark Todd (equestrian)
Captain Charles Upham (farmer, veteran soldier, VC and bar, 3)


MJ Pickering wrote: (more details may be available from her)

"New Zealand surgeons practically invented the process of reconstructive
surgery.  Well, that's not quite true - there were many instances of
reattaching noses and ears and such in Italy and India and a few other
places.  But the first world war resulted in plenty of cases to work on and
by the time the second world war rolled around, a phenomenon called
Airman's Burn where pilots who disobeyed orders and removed their goggles
and gloves due to the heat in their cockpits suffered extensive burns to
their faces and hands when shot down meant that skin grafting really took

"In the time between the two World Wars there were 4 full time
reconstructive surgeons - three were New Zealanders (working in Britain of
course).  Sir Harold Gillies was the first one and pioneered many of the
techniques.  Rainsford Mowlem was another but the most famous was Sir
Archibald McIndoe who started the Guinea Pig club of his patients which
some of you may have heard aboout.  By the time of the WWII more pilots
were surviving crashes due to better constructed planes and penicillan
ensured a greater survival rate so there were more men for him to work on.
Gillies tended to work of the canon fodder of the front in WWI.  The Guinea
Pig club still meets every year.  MacIndoe was not only at the forefront of
"holistic" medicine in that he treated his patients' minds and their trauma
as well as their bodies - he wouldn't let them go back into service until
he was sure their minds had recovered also, but he was the one to make the
connection between the recovery rate of burns victims who had fallen into
the sea and the concept of saline baths for burns victims.  Prior to that
an oil solution was used on their burns."


After receiving a master's from Canterbury College, Chistchurch, Rutherford
went to Cambridge in 1885 to work under Sir JJ Thomson at Cavendish

He took up a physics professorship at McGill, Montreal, in 1898, worked
with Soddy and in 1902-3 identified radioactive half-life, moved to
Victoria University of Manchester in 1907 and was awarded the Nobel Prize
in Chemistry in 1908 for his work on radioactivity.  He worked with Geiger
in 1908 and in 1909 used alpha particle bombardment of thin foils to lead
to his 1911 description of atomic structure.

He was knighted in 1914, then succeeded Thomson at the Cavendish Laboratory
in 1919.  He was elevated to the peerage in 1931.  His other awards
included an Order of Merit in 1921, the Copley Medal of the Royal Society
in 1922, and he was President of the Royal Society from 1925 until 1930.
In 1931 he was created Baron Rutherford of Nelson.


Howard Edwards wrote:

"Captain Charles Upham (retired), New Zealand's most decorated soldier and
veteran of World War Two, died last Tuesday and was buried with full
military honours after a service in Christchurch cathedral on Friday.
Upham was awarded two Victoria crosses for exceptional bravery during WWII.

"A modest hero.  Upham never saw himself as anything other than a New
Zealander doing his duty.  He refused to accept any land offered to
returning servicemen after the war, and also turned down a knighthood.  He
spent the remainder of his years on his North Canterbury farm and avoided
the spotlight of fame which the media oocasionally tried to shine upon


Lyndon Watson wrote:

"I took my father, who served with Charlie Upham in the 20th, to the
funeral on Friday, and I found the subject too close to many emotions to
write about for all the world to read.

"Upham's battalion, the 20th, was, in my biased opinion, the most
distinguished of all New Zealand regiments in the Second World War.
Together with the other battalions that comprised the 4th Brigade (the 18th
Auckland, 19th Wellington and 20th South Island battalions), it was made up
of the first and keenest men who volunteered in 1939, and it bore the brunt
of the actions in Crete (where Upham won his first V.C. for attacking and
destroying machine-gun posts in face of their fire), at Belhamed, and at
Ruweisat Ridge which was, like Stalingrad in the same year, one of the
crucial battles of the war (and where Upham won his second V.C. for running
in the open at advancing tanks and attacking them with hand-grenades).  At
each of those battles the 20th was nearly destroyed, and it was rebuilt
each time around the survivors who somehow kept its extraordinary spirit
alive.  Its third Victoria Cross was won by Sergeant Jack Hinton, who is
still going strong at 84.

"When Upham returned from the war, the people of Canterbury raised
10,000 pounds by public donation to buy him a farm.  That was enough to
buy a very good farm, but Upham declined and had the money put into an
educational trust.  He eventually bought a houseless block with a rehab.
loan and turned it into a farm with his own hard work."


Charles Upham died in November 1994.


That's all, folks.

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