Australia's nutty professor

1845 Georgina King (d. June 7, 1932), eccentric Australian geologist and anthropologist whose prominence was not matched by her theories’ accuracy.

One such theory was that woman is the ‘missing link’ ('The Discovery of the “Missing Link”: the appearance of Woman as a “Sport” in Nature, and the Evolution of Anthropoid Man’, Science of Man and Journal of the Royal Anthropological Society of Australasia, vol. 5, no. 11, December 1902).

King spent much of her scientific career fighting other scientists and sometimes accusing them of plagiarism of her work, but she was also widely published, and the Sydney Morning Herald printed many of her articles which are now considered to be quite fanciful and erroneous mixtures of science and spiritualism.

Georgina King was a long-term friend of Daisy Bates, a woman who lived and worked amongst Australia's indigenous people and was also one-time wife of Breaker Morant.