Background
BERGQUIST, Patricia was born on March 10, 1933 in Auckland. Daughter of William and Bertha E. Smyth.
BERGQUIST, Patricia was born on March 10, 1933 in Auckland. Daughter of William and Bertha E. Smyth.
Here she completed her Master of Science with First Class on the biology of a fern species and a second Master of Science equivalent in Zoology before going on to obtain her Doctor of Philosophy on the taxonomy of the Porifera in 1961.
She was Professor Emerita of Zoology and Honorary Professor of Anatomy at the University of Auckland. First attending Devonport Primary School, Bergquist went on to be Dux of Takapuna Grammar School before attending the University of Auckland in 1950. Following her doctorate she studied overseas, initially at Yale University where she broadened her systematic expertise, becoming an educator and researcher at the University of Auckland on matters related to anatomy, taxonomy and zoology, with particular interest in the marine sponge.
She felt a stable framework of higher level classification which would permit recognition of generic relationships and facilitate descriptions of new species was missing.
Bergquist died of breast cancer on 9 September 2009, aged 76.
Married Peter L. Bergquist in 1958.