Daphne Gollan was born on 4 May 1918. She joined the Communist Party of Australia in 1938 while studying at the University of Sydney and working in the Mitchell Library in Sydney (1941-1944). From 1945-47 she worked in the Research Department of the Federated Ironworkers' Association (FIA). In 1952 her husband Bob Gollan was appointed to the Australian National University. Daphne Gollan became a cataloguer at the ANU Library (1954-1959) then archives assistant at the university (1958-1960). Gollan learnt Russian and in 1962 she was the first ANU exchange student to go to Moscow. She was a tutor in the History Department at ANU from 1966-1969. Her MA thesis of 1967, ‘Bolshevik Party Organisation in Russia, 1907-1912’, had drawn on research conducted as an exchange student to Moscow State University. She was appointed lecturer in History in 1970. She was an active feminist in the 1970s and 1980s, and a Greens candidate in the Federal elections of 1984 and 1987. Daphne Gollan died on 4 October 1999 at the age of 81.