21 Facts About Ida Mann

Ida Caroline Mann was educated at Wycombe House School, Hampstead, London.

Ida Mann passed the Civil Service Girl Clerk's examination and took a job at the Post Office Savings Bank.

Ida Mann passed the matriculation examination in 1914, one of only eight women out of hundreds of passes.

Ida Mann was appointed as the Ophthalmic House Surgeon at St Mary's Hospital, London, under Leslie Paton and Frank Juler.

The premises in which Ida Mann conducted her private practice were closed down by the landlord.

Ida Mann found new premises for her own practice and then set about re-siting Moorfields.

Ida Mann found hospital premises in Edgware, belonging to the Priory of the Holy Sepulchre, secured the lease, moved the nursing staff there and saw the gradual return of the surgical staff.

Therefore, when Ida Mann applied for, and was appointed to, the post of Margaret Ogilvy Reader in Ophthalmology at the University of Oxford in 1941, she was obliged to combine this research and teaching post with her work at Moorfields in London, her work on the Chemical Defence Research team and her work as a private consultant in London and Oxford.

Ida Mann's efforts were recognised by the university in 1945 when she was given a personal professorship: the first woman to receive one at Oxford.

Ida Mann was Titular Professor there from January 1945 until 30 September 1947.

Ida Mann became acquainted with William Ewart Gye, known as Bill Gye, who was Director of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund at Mill Hill, and his wife, Elsa, during the war.

Ida Mann became stepmother to her husband's three sons from his first marriage.

Ida Mann did not change her name on marriage, as the complications arising from having two Professor Gyes in the same household were easily foreseen.

Ida Mann flew there in an Imperial Airways Flying Boat, which took a week to fly at low altitude from Southampton to Melbourne.

Ida Mann gave a number of papers and made the return journey "with the feeling that the gloom of Europe would soon descend, and that this brilliant, sunny and friendly land would be blotted from my memory".

Ida Mann purchased a bungalow in Dalkeith, resigned from Moorfields, and arranged for all their belongings to be shipped to Australia.

Ida Mann started a private practice as an ophthalmologist, which was always her insurance against economic uncertainty.

Ida Mann traveled extensively throughout Australia and Oceania studying the incidence of eye disease in different races and cultures, with particular reference to the Aboriginal people.

Ida Mann published extensively in the area of eye anatomy and eye disease, publishing many scientific articles and several books.

Ida Mann wrote on her travels and findings relating to trachoma, published under her married name Ida Gye or a pseudonym, Caroline Gye.

Dame Ida Mann died at her home in Perth in 1983, aged 90.