These giant flightless crickets are among the heaviest insects in the world — and bear a striking resemblance to the fierce-looking Chronophage that looks out from its clock perch over King’s Parade.

And they were the chief passion of Dr Aola Mary Richards, the first New Zealand woman to be awarded a PhD in biological sciences and a remarkable legacy donor to Cambridge.

Not many women can boast a cave wētā species — Miotopus richardsae — named for them, but the late Aola Richards was hardly ordinary. Aola left significant bequests to her alma mater, then Victoria College of the University of New Zealand (now Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington), the University of Sydney — and the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge. Why Cambridge, halfway across the world and virtually another planet to this antipodean trailblazer?

It turns out that Aola’s father, who was Welsh, went to Trinity College and Aola had the ambition to do postdoctoral work with V.B. Wigglesworth, a leading entomologist and Quick Professor of Biology at the University. Circumstances prevented this plan’s coming to fruition, however, so she developed her entomology research in Australia and New Zealand instead – even living in a cave with the wētā to better study them.

Malcolm Burrows, Emeritus Professor of Zoology at Cambridge’s Department of Zoology, recalls meeting Aola for the first time at a dinner party and their ensuing 30-year friendship: ‘Our relationship was very much based on the science, and she was a trove of stories about her work. She kept her private self buried quite deep, however. It may well have been because of her experience as one of the only women in a very male-dominated academic environment, which largely wasn’t fair to women at that time. She was certainly determined and thick-skinned, and a good scientist.’

Aola never forgot the opportunity to study at Cambridge that had slipped through her grasp. She decided to make it possible for other students to fulfil their dreams. The £5m Aola Mary Richards Fund will be one of the biggest departmental postgraduate funds in the whole University. It will further education and research in the zoological sciences by supporting studentships for PhD students and research grants for postdoctoral researchers, called respectively Aola Mary Richards Studentships and Aola Mary Richards Grants.

The gift is set to shape zoological scholarship — and no doubt all our lives and experiences of the natural world — long into the future.

Malcolm says, ‘I know how excited the department has been to receive this unexpected gift and how it will help our young people. And I know what satisfaction Aola derived from being able to give this legacy gift. Funding is very difficult for postgraduate students today, particularly in insect biology. We rely so much on insects — their study is so important in the vast effort of caring for the environment, wildlife and the delicate biological balance — not to mention the role insects play in sustaining our food supply. Once they go, everything will go.’

Rebecca Kilner, Cambridge professor of evolutionary biology and a director of the Museum of Zoology, concurs: ‘Our scholars in zoological sciences will benefit enormously from Aola’s thoughtful and extremely generous bequest. Her substantial gift will have a significant and lasting effect on the Department of Zoology’s capacity to support PhD students and postdoctoral researchers fortunate to receive an award from the Aola Mary Richards Fund.

‘Just as Aola wished, it will ensure that the next generation of scientists in zoology have opportunities in research, training and career development at Cambridge that Aola was not able to pursue herself. Her legacy will be put to timely use to further the work undertaken by the Department to understand the origins and maintenance of biodiversity, which she spent so much of her life describing in detail, and the ways in which we can arrest its current loss.’

Happily, Aola’s later years saw the realisation of some elements of her early dreams of a life in England: she retired in London, indulged her passion for opera as a Friend of the Royal Opera House – and met Sir David Attenborough at a Clare College dinner, where they reminisced together about the exact New Zealand cave where her wētā research began — and where Sir David had filmed — many years before.