White-Haney, Rose Ethel Janet (Jean)   (1877 - 1953)

Jean was the Australian Government's first appointed female scientist beginning her employment in Prickly Pear destruction in 1912.

She was born on 11 March 1877 at the Melbourne Observatory, South Yarra, Victoria; she died on 21 October 1953 at Camarillo, California, USA.

The seventh of eight children, Jean graduated from the University of Melbourne after being awarded B.Sc. in 1904, M.Sc. in 1906, and D.Sc in 1909. She was the second woman in Australia to be awarded a Doctorate of Science.

The Queensland Government established an experimental station in the thick of the prickly pear region at the rural Dulacca Research Station where Jean was Officer-In-Charge. When she starting working at Dulacca there were no buildings and she virtually camped.

During her time in the field she was quoted saying: "I insisted on not being given any special privileges because of being a woman. If you do that, you make it harder for all women to engage in research."

On 22 February 1915 at Malvern, Melbourne, White married Victor William Haney, an American-born agricultural chemist.

Her marriage to an American scientist did not affect her employment, but the station at Dulacca closed in 1916 when the war made it difficult to obtain chemicals and staff.

During her time there she conducted more than ten thousand chemical poisoning experiments and tested fungal cultures imported from overseas. Her final report concluded that arsenic pentoxide was superior to other chemicals in destroying the pear, but that, given the cost of poisoning, the only real solution lay in discovering

"some parasitic insects or organisms capable of bringing about the destruction of the different species of prickly-pear as completely as the Coccus indicus has done for the monacantha species in North Queensland."

Source: Extracted from:
https://trailblazingwomenofaustralia.wordpress.com/2021/04/26/jean-white-haney-1877-1953-botanist/
https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/whitehaney-rose-ethel-janet-jean-12015
Portrait Photo: 'Trailblazing Women of Australia' website (above).

Collecting localities for 'White-Haney, J.' from AVH (2024)

Data from 219 specimens