There were cheers from the audience in Dunedin when Emily Siedeberg became the first woman to gain a medical degree.
She had enrolled in 1891 and although the university had in principle accepted the idea of women studying medicine, the atmosphere was much cooler in practice.
Later in life Dr Siedeberg made light of the antagonism she had faced, writes Patricia A. Sargison in the DNZB. But like all trailblazers and pioneers, she had to pay a price.
"The strictures of both the dean and her mother, however, brought a considerable degree of isolation and constraint; she was warned to give no encouragement to frivolity, to keep men at a distance and never to show her feelings," says Sargison.
"She was weighed down, too, with a sense of responsibility for the entire future of women in medicine; she felt that the eyes of the world were on her and that her conduct had to be above reproach."
