Elsa Vesta Goveia  

Born in 1925, in what was then British Guiana, Elsa Vesta Goveia gained her PhD in history at the University College London. She joined the staff of the then University College of the West Indies in 1950 as Lecturer in the Department of History. In 1961, she was appointed Professor of West Indian History. She was the first female Professor at the University of the West Indies. A brilliant lecturer and outstanding scholar, she was the author of seminal works on West Indian history the major ones being: A study of the Historiography of the British West Indies. (American Institute of Geography and History), 1956 and Slave Society in the British Leeward Islands. (Yale University Press), 1965 She died in 1980.