The Physiological Society of New Zealand (PSNZ) was initiated in 1972 by Professor John Hubbard (University of Otago) and Professor Jack Sinclair (University of Auckland). The purpose of the Society was to provide a forum for New Zealand-wide communication on research being carried out nationally in the physiological sciences. This was achieved mainly through annual scientific conferences and then, as now, particular emphasis was placed on the participation of young scientists in these meetings.

In 2001, the Society hosted the 34th World Congress of the International Union of Physiological Sciences (IUPS2001) in Christchurch. Since 2004, our annual meeting has been held within the MedSciNZ Conference which is also attended by biomedical and clinical scientists working in other closely related disciplines.

The Society currently has around 100 members. They work across research fields that range from functional genomics to computational physiology and they make important contributions in the trend toward multi-disciplinary research that is now increasingly important in the medical and biomedical sciences.

See the PSNZ Constitution for more details.