Georgina King, was an Australian geologist and anthropologist. Georgina King was born on 6 June 1845 in Fremantle, Western Australia, to George King, a Church of England clergyman from Ireland, and his wife Jane Mathewson. Her brother Kelso King would also bring acclaim to the family. In 1847, her family moved to Sydney. King's father, a fellow of St Paul's College, oversaw her education and encouraged her to read widely including books on evolution and natural history. Her family doctor, George Bennett, a keen naturalist, recommended texts on geology to her. Discouraged by her father and Bennett from marrying, King looked after a nephew and niece at Springwood from the 1870s until 1881, and then travelled to Britain and Europe.
Scientific studies
After returning to Australia, King was active in the Women's Literary Society, which was founded in 1889, along with friend Rose Scott. King was an original member of the Women's Club. In 1888, King attended the inaugural meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science. She met many distinguished scientists through this meeting and later corresponded with R. L. Jack, who had done extensive geological surveys of Queensland and Frederick McCoy of Victoria. Recalling the geological history she had been taught in her youth, and inspired by the work of McCoy and others, King proposed a 'Tertiary Period Catastrophism' theory to the wider scientific community. When her paper on this theory was rejected by the Royal Society of New South Wales in 1892, King sent them to be published in newspapers like the Sydney Morning Herald. Similarly she sent her papers to the University of Sydney and other scientists to consider. Her controversial ideas and claims to theories posed by other scientists, led to further ridicule. King collected botanical specimens for Ferdinand von Mueller, from the Blue Mountains, Port Jackson, and various other parts of New South Wales and Queensland. She collected the type specimen of Pultenaea subternata. King published papers on anthropological subjects after 1900. She used some of her father's work on Aborigines to expand her ideas, and continued to elaborate on her geological theory of evolution. She was elected a fellow of the Royal Anthropological Society of Australasia, and published within its journal, Science of Man. From 1913 King corresponded with and financially supported, Daisy Bates, another woman who felt frustrated by the scientific establishment. King volunteered with the Red Cross during World War I. She made dolls for patients of the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children and was a prolific letter writer to the daily newspapers. King died on 7 June 1932 at Darling Point, Sydney, and was cremated.
