Averil Margaret Lysaght (14 April 1905 – 21 August 1981) was a New Zealand biologist, science historian and artist, best known for her scholarly work on Joseph Banks.

[4] Lysaght was initially educated at home by a governess but was sent to Chilton House Private Girls Boarding School in Wellington when she was 12.

[1] From 1927 to 1929 she was on the staff of the Cawthron Institute's department of entomology and from 1931 to 1932 she was employed by Victoria University College as a temporary assistant in zoology.

Lysaght subsequently obtained employment as an assistant editor of the zoology section of Chambers Encyclopaedia.

During her time there, either in 1947 or 1948 she met Norman Boyd Kinnear, Keeper of Zoology at the British Museum of Natural History.

[2] She also did in depth research on the museums' collection of Sydney Parkinson's paintings and drawings and continued to work at this project for over twenty years.

She also provided John Cawte Beaglehole with much of the zoological and botanical notes for his books on James Cook's three voyages.

[6] 'Lysaght was a talented artist, a gift that apparently first developed at Nottingham and later at Saint Martin's School of Art in London.