Jane Margaret Soons (18 June 1931 – 8 September 2020) was a New Zealand geomorphologist and pioneering role model for female students.
[2][5][6] After tutoring at two British universities, she became fed-up with being overlooked for higher academic positions, due to what she described as "an inbred feeling that this was not a women’s world".
In 1960s Britain, the idea that a woman could combine an academic career with having a family was viewed as odd; New Zealanders, she later learnt, were, on the whole, rather less anti-woman and more relaxed.
[7] She is remembered by her students and colleagues for her kindness, praise and genuine support of their work, as well as her enthusiastic lectures and mentoring of young geomorphologists and future generations of female scientists.
[6] Soons is nationally and internationally known for her investigations of glacier-sculpted landforms in the Rakaia Valley and her contribution to debates around environmental change in the central South Island.