I am delighted to advise the RSV Council Meeting of 27 February, 2020 unanimously agreed to appoint four leaders in the Victorian science community as Fellows of the Royal Society of Victoria.

Being elected a Fellow is the highest membership honour the Society can bestow on a person and entitles the Fellow to use of the postnominals ‘FRSV.’ Our four new Fellows will be formally inducted as part of the Society’s Annual General Meeting program which will be held on Thursday 14 May between 5 and 8pm. Members, please mark this event in your diary. You will receive an invitation with full details, including an address by Professor Marilyn Renfree AO, in late March.

On behalf of your Council, please join me in congratulating our four new Fellows.

The contribution of Dr David Maughan Churchill to the life and leadership of our Society has been significant, not just as one of our four Trustees, but also as our President from 1983 to 1984. David’s election was a meaningful moment in our long succession of science community leaders, as his corresponding tenure as the Government Botanist of Victoria and Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens (RBG) recalled the role and contribution of our first (Royal) President, Baron Sir Ferdinand von Mueller, in 1859, and perpetuated the long relationship between the RBG’s scientific leadership and the RSV.

The Society’s first female member, Helen Harriet Neild (1859 – 1907) was registered as a Member of the Royal Society of Victoria on 10th October, 1889. The second child and eldest daughter of eleven siblings in the Neild household, Nellie had been brought up as a young society woman, notably singing at the Shakespeare Society’s musical gatherings in the late 1880s. She had attended the University of Melbourne to attain a science degree, which in those early years was offered as a Bachelor of Arts under Sir Frederick McCoy’s guidance. She is identified by Dr Allan Madsley as a zoologist.