Mary Elizabeth Fama (née Duncan; 23 October 1938 – 6 July 2021)[1] was a New Zealand applied mathematician who became "a leading international figure" in the analysis of stress and deformation of rock and the application of this analysis to mining.
[5] After early education at a boarding school in Scotland, Fama became a student at Erskine College, Wellington, where she excelled in mathematics but was stripped of her academic honours after being caught rebelling against the school rules.
[1] Fama was born on 23 October 1938 in Windsor, England, to a Catholic family of five children; her father was a New Zealander, army officer, and government official.
[1] In 1968, she met and married Australian psychiatrist Peter Fama, then working in Auckland but slated to return to Australia.
[1] Fama suffered for many years from pulmonary tuberculosis, likely contracted as a teenager but not diagnosed until much later.