Professor Dame Ida Caroline Mann, Mrs Gye, DBE, FRCS (6 February 1893, West Hampstead, London – 18 November 1983, Perth, Western Australia)[1] was "a distinguished ophthalmologist ... equally well known for her pioneering research work on embryology and development of the eye, and on the influences of genetic and social factors on the incidence and severity of eye disease throughout the world".

[4] She passed the Civil Service Girl Clerk's examination and took a job at the Post Office Savings Bank.

[7] After qualification she had no clear idea about specialising and applied for all available positions as a houseman (a junior role for newly qualified doctors).

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

[citation needed] At the outbreak of war, Moorfields Eye Hospital was commandeered as a first aid post and the staff were dispersed.

[10] There was still a need for a central London site to treat ophthalmic emergencies, and by a mixture of bravado and sheer energy, she managed to re-occupy part of the old Moorfields Hospital on City Road, which remained operational throughout the war despite being bombed.

Working with her friend, Davidine Pullinger, and the biochemist, Antoinette Pirie, she worked out the entire pathology of mustard gas keratitis, which afflicted soldiers from the First World War some ten to fifteen years after they had survived a mustard gas attack.

She 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".

[16] The introduction of the National Health Service in Britain had drastically changed Mann's work and she was dissatisfied with the impact on ophthalmology.

Perhaps more pressingly her husband had retired from Mill Hill and was suffering from ill-health which was exacerbated by the English winters.

Shortly after his death she took an assignment reporting on the incidence of eye disease for the Western Australia Public Health Department.

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