Lyn Forster

Forster was born in Upper Hutt and grew up on a small farm near Feilding. She enrolled at Victoria University College in Wellington but moved to Christchurch in 1948 without completing her degree. She moved again to Dunedin in 1957; in the late 1960s she returned to her university studies and eventually completed a PhD at the University of Otago in 1979.[1]

Forster was a lecturer in zoology at the University of Otago, and also carried out research and wrote papers and books on spiders. Her work focused on jumping spiders, and on white-tailed spiders and Australian redback spiders. In addition, she worked at the Otago Museum designing and creating displays of spiders, and running educational programmes on spiders for children.[3]

Forster was also an active member of the Otago Institute (the Otago branch of the Royal Society of New Zealand); in 1990 she was elected president, the first woman to hold the position.[1]

In 1948 Forster married fellow scientist Ray Forster. The couple had four children together.[1]

• Forster, Raymond R.; Forster, L. M. (1973). New Zealand spiders. Auckland: Collins. ISBN 978-0-00-211565-0.
• Forster, Raymond R.; Forster, L. M. (1974). Small land animals of New Zealand (revised ed.). Dunedin: J. McIndoe.
• Forster, Raymond R.; Forster, L. M. (1999). Spiders of New Zealand and their world-wide kin. Dunedin: University of Otago Press in association with Otago Museum. ISBN 978-1-877133-79-4.