Margaret Elizabeth Hamer
HAMER, Margaret Elizabeth, (1926-2012)
Margaret Hamer (nee Angas) was one of Australia’s earliest women engineers and the first woman to graduate with a Bachelor of Engineering from the University of Sydney in 1948.
Born on 11 May 1926 in South Australia, Margaret was the eldest child of Dudley Theger Angas and Mary Angas of Hill River station near Clare. She was part of the prominent Angas family, whose influence on South Australia was significant. Her great-great-grandfather, George Fife Angas, was a central figure in the establishment of the colony, a British merchant and banker, he underwrote the struggling South Australia Company in the 1830s, effectively bankrolling the colony at a critical moment and ensuring its survival as a free-settler society. His vision earned him recognition as one of the “founders” of South Australia. This legacy of public and institutional contribution continued through later generations, including her great-grandfather, John Howard Angas, who endowed engineering and chemistry at the University of Adelaide.
Margaret’s early education took place at home under governesses before she attended Woodlands Girls’ Grammar School, where she excelled academically. She entered the University of Adelaide in the early 1940s as its first female engineering student. Joined in later years by very few women in a cohort of nearly ninety men, she quickly distinguished herself - passing Engineering I and II, representing the University in hockey, and serving as an editor of Hysteresis, the Engineering Society magazine, contributing a technical article on The Early History of Flight, despite being described as the magazine’s gossip writer.
Source: University of Adelaide Engineering Society. Hysteresis. Vol. 1, no. 1 (November 1945). Adelaide: University of Adelaide, 1945. Page 25. https://connect.adelaide.edu.au/nodes/view/22270#idx203244
In 1946, Margaret transferred to the University of Sydney to specialise in aeronautical engineering, as Adelaide did not offer the discipline. Her arrival was notable, newspaper reports at the time mention that earlier attempts by women to enter the Sydney engineering faculty had been met with hostility including a strike and student walkout. When interviewed Margaret however said she found her fellow students “wonderfully co-operative.”
Source: Aeronautics Attract Engineering Student The Sun (Sydney, NSW), September 5, 1946, 13. National Library of Australia (Trove). https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/page/24910142
The 1947 Sydney University Engineering Year Book account provides a rare contemporary perspective on her standing among peers. It described Angas as “one of the year’s leading lights,” noting her “impressive record (both academic and extra-curricular),” including representation of Adelaide University in hockey and a credit in Workshop Practice. It also described her as “slim, attractive, vivacious and withal very feminine,” noting her “irrepressible femininity” alongside her academic success - an insight into the cultural balancing act expected of women engineers of the period.
Angas completed her degree in 1948, becoming the first woman in Sydney University’s history to graduate in engineering. Prior to graduation, she undertook six months of practical work with the CSIR Commonwealth research organisation testing structural materials for aircraft construction.
Her motivation for studying aeronautics was driven by an early ambition to fly: “I did the aeronautical degree because I was keen on flying - but couldn’t because of short sight,” she said. “Then I did the stupid thing that we all did, got married and had children - so I never used the degree.”
On 13 November 1948 she married Alan William Hamer, a Rhodes Scholar and leading industrial chemist. Through this marriage she became sister-in-law to Sir Rupert Hamer, Premier of Victoria from 1972 to 1981. The couple had four children and lived in Melbourne, later spending several years in India during Alan’s directorship with Imperial Chemical Industries.
Although Margaret did not pursue a long-term engineering career, her later life was marked by substantial public leadership. After completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) at the University of Melbourne, she joined the Board of Management of the Queen Victoria Hospital for Women in 1972, encouraged by her mother-in-law. She became Chairman of the Planning Committee for the hospital’s relocation to Clayton and, in 1977, succeeded her mother-in-law as Chairman of the Board. Her tenure was characterised by determination and strategic oversight during a period of financial strain and major redevelopment.
Margaret later served as a magistrate in the Victorian Magistrates Court (1986–1990), extending her contribution to public life. Her achievements were recognised with an Honorary Doctor of Laws from Monash University in 1987 and Membership of the Order of Australia (AM) in 1997.
Margaret Hamer died on 14 May 2012, aged 86. Her life illustrates the experience of a generation of women who entered engineering with extraordinary ability and ambition, yet whose careers were often redirected. Even so, her legacy endures - as a pioneer, a leader, and a reminder of the pathways opened, and constrained, for early women in engineering..
Source: In and Out of Town. The Sun (Sydney, NSW), June 20, 1948, 24. National Library of Australia, Trove. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/228805185/24554651.
References:
To read an obituary for Margaret Hamer use this link:
https://www.smh.com.au/national/leader-at-key-hospital-during-change-20120628-2157e.html
Compiled by Kathryn Laurentis, BEng(Hons) BSc GAICD FIEAust 23 April 2026
