Rebecca Priestley
(@RKPriestley) Rebecca Priestley is a science writer and historian with a particular interest in New Zealand’s science history. Her anthology, The Awa Book of New Zealand Science, won the 2009 Royal Society of New Zealand Science Book Prize and Atoms, Dinosaurs & DNA: 68 Great New Zealand Scientists, co-authored with Veronika Meduna, won the Elsie Locke Award for Children’s Non-fiction in 2009. Rebecca curated The Art of Science, a joint exhibition between the Royal Society of New Zealand and the New Zealand Portrait Gallery, which opened in March 2011. As well as her regular science column for The Listener, she writes the occasional book review or travel feature and is working on two books: one about New Zealand’s nuclear and radiation history and the other an anthology of Antarctic science.
Huia today, gone tomorrow
By Rebecca Priestley in Culture
Issue 3482 3rd Feb 2007
New Zealand, a hotspot for extinction, is now a world leader in saving species.
Habit forming
By Rebecca Priestley in Science
Issue 3466 14th Oct 2006
It was a New Zealander, Charles Cotton, whose books awakened people's interest in landscape and its evolution - inspiring even artist Colin McCahon.
The good oil?
By Rebecca Priestley in Science
Issue 3464 30th Sep 2006
Fish oil has been hailed as the wonder cure for anything from children's learning difficulties to depression. However, a New Zealand researcher says we shouldn't get too excited yet.
The last huia
By Rebecca Priestley in Science
Issue 3433 25th Feb 2006
We have 19th-century ornithologists like Walter Buller to thank for specimens of now-extinct species like the huia.
Long & winding road
By Rebecca Priestley in Science
Issue 3419 19th Nov 2005
Where did your ancestors come from? A DNA project is helping to map evolutionary lineage and early migration routes and if Maori get involved it could more accurately pinpoint their islands of origin.
Hot property
By Rebecca Priestley in Science
Issue 3417 5th Nov 2005
In the 1950s, New Zealand was as excited about the dawning atomic age as any nation - especially when uranium was discovered here.