List of people from Dunedin

The New Zealand city of Dunedin is noted for producing a large number of famous people. Many of these are natives of the city; others travelled to Dunedin to be educated at the University of Otago.

The arts

Visual arts

• Illustrator and engraver John Buckland Wright.
• Māori sculptor Carissa Proffit (born 1974), who works in Oamaru stone.
• Australian war artist H. Septimus Power was born in Dunedin in 1877.
• Cartoonist David Low
• Caricature artist Murray Webb
• Māori painter Ralph Hotere lives and works in Port Chalmers.
• Painters Grahame Sydney, Jeffrey Harris and Claire Beynon all live in Dunedin.
• Pete Wheeler, painter, lived in Dunedin foir several years
• Frances Hodgkins (1869 – 1947), New Zealand's most celebrated expatriate painter, was born in Dunedin, trained at the Dunedin School of Art and first matured here as an artist.
• Alfred Henry O'Keeffe (1858-1941), a prominent artist during the early 20th Century
• John Thomson, Sculptor (born in Dunedin, living and working in the UK)
• Colin McCahon, painter
• Children's book illustrators Robyn Belton and David Elliot currently live in Dunedin, David in Port Chalmers.
• Prominent architects Francis Petre and Robert Lawson both lived and worked in Dunedin.

Literature

• Thomas Bracken, late-nineteenth century poet who wrote the New Zealand National Anthem God Defend New Zealand and who was the first person to publish the phrase "God's Own Country".
• Nobel Prize short-listee Janet Frame, born there in 1924, died there in 2004: NZ Edge biography.
• Writer James K. Baxter was born in Dunedin in 1926 and wrote many of his plays there in the 1960s in association with Rosalie and Patric Carey's Globe Theatre.
• Playwright Roger Hall
• Short story writer O. E. Middleton
• Brian Turner poet and Former Hockey International
• Graham Bishop (geologist) poet and writer; authored The Real McKay - The remarkable life of Alexander McKay, geologist (2008); Poles Apart, Climbing Mount Aspiring; co-authored From Sea to Silver Peaks, Vanishing Ice
• Catherine Chidgey, author, who now lives in Dunedin
• Writer and publisher A.H. Reed
• Philip Temple

Drama

• Actor Sam Neill has close associations with Dunedin. He was raised to the west of Dunedin, in Queenstown, Central Otago, where he still resides.
• Alan Dale is a New Zealand actor who also has been on many Australian TV Shows.

Music

• Many of New Zealand’s top bands of the 1980s and early 1990s started out in Dunedin, establishing the Dunedin Sound. These include The Chills, The Clean, Straitjacket Fits, Sneaky Feelings, The 3Ds and Toy Love, and musicians Martin Phillipps and David Kilgour.

Politics and business

• A large proportion of the country's leading companies in and beyond the twentieth century originated in Dunedin. A selection of relevant company or brand names includes Arthur Barnett, Cottonsofts, Donaghy, Fletchers, Fisher and Paykel, Fulton Hogan, Hallensteins, Methven, Mosgiel, NZI, Ravensdown, the Union Company of Sir James Mills, Wests, Whitcoulls, and Wrightson.
• Deputy Prime Minister (since 1999) Michael Cullen
• Pamela Tate SC, appointed Solicitor-General for Victoria, Australia in 2003, was born in Dunedin, and received one of her degrees from the University of Otago.
• Ethel Benjamin, New Zealand's first female lawyer.
• Mai Chen - prominent constitutional lawyer

Science

• Tramway and mining engineer George Smith Duncan
• Two of the founders of modern plastic surgery, Harold Gillies and Archibald McIndoe were born in Dunedin in 1882 and 1900 respectively.
• Popular email program Pegasus Mail was written by David Harris while he was employed by the University of Otago.
• Michael Woodruff a pioneer in the science of organ transplantation
• Andrew Wilson created the first Bose-Einstein condensate in the southern hemisphere in 1998 at the University of Otago.
• John Carew Eccles became a professor and head of the Department of Physiology at the University of Otago from 1944 to 1951; before winning the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1963 for describing the electric transmission of impulses along nerves. .
• Political scientist Jim Flynn, discoverer of the Flynn effect in IQ, is based at the University of Otago.
• Forensic psychiatrist John Macdonald

Sport

Cricket

• Australian test cricket international Clarrie Grimmett.
• New Zealand test cricket international and Black Caps coach Warren Lees.
• New Zealand test cricket captain Ken Rutherford.
• New Zealand test cricket captain Bert Sutcliffe MBE.
• New Zealand test cricket international and Black Caps coach Glenn Turner.
• Jeff Wilson (see under Rugby, below)
• New Zealand test cricket wicket keeper Brendon McCullum, raised in South Dunedin.
• Pakistani test cricket international and TVNZ cricket commentator, Billy Ibadulla.

Netball and basketball

• Double international Silver Ferns netball captain and Tall Ferns basketball international Belinda Colling
• New Zealand netball international and Silver Fern coach Lois Muir.
• Silver Ferns netball captain Lesley Rumball - New Zealand's most capped netball player.
• Silver Ferns netball captain Anna Stanley.
• Double international Silver Ferns netball and Tall Ferns basketball international Donna Wilkins
• Current Silver Ferns netball captain Adine Wilson.
• Tall Blacks basketball captain Glen Denham

Rugby union

• All Black rugby union first-five Tony Brown.
• Double international All Blacks rugby union and Kiwis rugby league player Marc Ellis.
• Scotland rugby union international John Leslie.
• All Black rugby union full-back and coach Laurie Mains.
• All Black rugby union captain Anton Oliver.
• All Black rugby union captain Taine Randell.
• Double international All Blacks rugby union and Black Caps cricket player Jeff Wilson.

Other sports

• Olympic champion long jumper Yvette Corlett (née Williams).
• Olympic Finn class yachting gold medalist and three times America Cup-winning captain Russell Coutts (DCNZM, CBE).
• Greg Henderson, former world champion and Olympian in track and road cycling.
• Internationally recognised swimming coach Duncan Laing.
• Double Olympic champion swimmer Danyon Loader.
• World record-breaking middle-distance athlete Jack Lovelock.
• New Zealand hockey international (and award winning poet) Brian Turner.
• New Zealand international golfer Greg Turner.
• New Zealand soccer international Steve Wooddin.

Military

• Sir Keith Park, World War I air ace, later Air Marshal in the defence of London during World War II.
• Duncan Boyes, English recipient of the Victoria Cross in 1864 in Japan, was buried in Dunedin in 1869.
• Horace Robert Martineau, English recipient of the Victoria Cross in 1899 in South Africa, was buried in Dunedin in 1916.