Alice Mary Bush was born in New Zealand, the daughter of Joseph Stanton, a Judge of the Supreme Court of New Zealand, and his wife Marjorie Aileen, daughter of Thomas McMaster, a haberdasher. She was educated at the Girls Diocesan High School, Auckland and the University of Otago, graduating MB ChB in 1936. In 1934 she had been awarded the Strong Memorial Medal in Anatomy. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in 1955 and a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London in 1970.

After junior house appointments at Auckland Public Hospital and the new Plymouth Public Hospital, 1938-1939, she was appointed physician to the Allergy Clinic at Green Lane Hospital, and paediatrician to the Child Health Clinic of the Department of Health. Her special interest was in paediatrics and she wrote several papers for the New Zealand Medical Journal. She was one time President of the New Zealand Family Planning Association.

She married William Arthur Faulkner Bush, a mine assayer, in 1940, and they had two children: a son and a daughter. Outside her work, her family and her children, she had no special interests.

Sir Gordon Wolstenholme
V Luniewska