Ida Lee - Infinite Women

Born: 11 February 1865, Australia
Died: 3 October 1943
Country most active: Australia
Also known as: Ida Louise Marriott

This biography has been shared from The Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation, published by the Centre for Transformative Innovation, Swinburne University of Technology, under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Ida Lee was an historical geographer who wrote several books on maritime exploration in the Pacific. In the late 1890s she moved to England and spent much of her spare time searching through British libraries, including the Admiralty. There Lee began to study and transcribe a number of journals and logbooks from many of the British historical voyages. Her books are published under either the name of Lee (maiden name) or Marriott (married name) and copies of most of her works are held at the Mitchell Library. Through her studies Lee developed a considerable knowledge of systematic botany and botanical taxonomy and was able to update Allan Cunningham’s nomenclature. Lee was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society of London 1913 and was only the second person to be made an honorary Fellow of the Royal Australian Historical Society.

Chronology
1897: Career position – First piece of work published: The Bush Fire and other verses
1906: Career position – The Coming of the British to Australia, 1788 to 1829 published
1912: Career position – Commodore Sir John Hayes, His Voyage and Life published
1913: Award – Fellow, Royal Geographical Society of London (FRGS)
1915: Career position – The Logbooks of the ‘Lady Nelson’ published
1918: Award – Honorary Fellow, Royal Australian Historical Society
1920: Career position – Captain Bligh’s Second Voyage to the South Sea published
1925: Career position – Early Explorers in Australia published
1927: Career position – The Voyage of the Caroline published