Adelaide super gran sets academic record at 94

A 94-year-old Adelaide great-great-grandmother, Phyllis Turner, has become the world’s oldest person to earn a masters degree.

After having to leave primary school in Sydney at 12 to help her mother raise their family, Mrs Turner returned to study and then enrolled at Adelaide University at the age of 70.

After achieving honours in anthropology in 2002 she moved to the university’s medical school to do her masters in medical science.

Mrs Turner said that she felt “very happy” after five years of study for the masters but was sorry she was “a little bit immobilised” in having to use a walking stick. Her professor, Maciej Henneberg, described her champion mature year student as having an amazing brain.

The super graduate’s daughter, Anne O’Herran, intends to enter Phyllis Turner’s academic performance into the Guinness World Records as the oldest higher degree research graduate.