Eliza Hodgson dominated the study of New Zealand hepatics in the 20th century. Born Eliza Amy Campbell at Havelock North, Hawkes Bay, Hodgson was known by her middle name, Amy. Interested in botany since childhood, she began collecting flowering plants and ferns in 1912 after marrying John Hodgson, a farm manager, with whom she had four children. In 1925 the couple moved to a farm in Kiwi Valley, south of Wairoa, where the moss expert G.O.K. Sainsbury was resident. Sainsbury and Hodgson thereafter became friends, encouraging each other in their studies of the lower plants. Hodgson proceeded to specialise in liverworts and published her first scientific paper in 1930. Around this time she also entered into correspondence with botanists around the world. Her most productive time was yet to come; over the course of 31 years (1941-1972) she published 20 papers dealing with New Zealand liverworts. Hodgson was made an honorary member of the British Bryological Society, a Fellow of the Linnean Societies of New Zealand and London, and received an honorary DSc from Massey University in 1976. Her bryophyte herbarium was donated to Massey in 1972.

Sources:
C.J. Axford, "Hodgson, Eliza Amy 1888-1983", Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, updated 22 June 2007:
http://www.dnzb.govt.nz/, accessed 15 June 2010
E.J. Godley, 1984, "Eliza Amy Hodgson, 1888-1983", Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 112: 19-25.