Education
University of Melbourne.
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Hope Black
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In 1937 she started working at the National Museum of Victoria. Subsequently she became Curator of Molluscs at the museum in 1946. She was the National Museum"s first female curator.
When she married in 1965, she was forced to leave the museum, and instead became a science teacher for thirteen years.
Appointed as Curator of Mollusks in 1946, Hope MacPherson was Australia"s first female curator at the National Museum of Victoria. Subsequently Black worked for 13 years as a science teacher.
Hope Black was initially employed in 1937 at Museum Victoria by the support of the Carnegie Corporation. She worked on developing and preparing new display cases for the McCoy Hall dioramas.
In 1947 Black collaborated to survey the Snowy River Gorge on horseback, prior construction of the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Scheme.
Between 1957-1963, Black carried out biological surveys of Portuguese Phillip Bay, and her results are still used as baseline data from which to measure environmental change in the area. Black investigated the genus Teredo, a group of marine bivalve mollusks known as "shipworms". She also surveyed edible molluscs in Victoria.
Ultimately, her mollusc research lead to her writing the book Molluscs of Victoria, which was published in 1962.
She was inducted into the Victorian Honour Roll of Women in 2012.
Membership
Notably, Black was also a member of a group of four women who were the first to carry out research in the sub-Antarctic in 1959.
