Mackenzie, Elke, 1911-1990

Elke Mackenzie, formerly Ivan Mackenzie Lamb, was born in London on September 10, 1911, and grew up in Scotland. She was educated at the Edinburgh Academy and earned a B.Sc. from Edinburgh University in 1933. Mackenzie spent the next two years doing research at the Universities of Munich and Würzburg and in 1935 was appointed Assistant Keeper in the Department of Botany at the British Museum of Natural History under lichenologist Annie Lorrain Smith.

From 1944-1946 Mackenzie worked as a botanist with the British expedition to the Antarctic known as “Operation Tabarin.” She was the recipient of both the British and U.S. Polar Medals. After returning from Europe, she accepted a teaching position at Instituto Lilloa in Tucumán, Argentina. Mackenzie traveled and collected extensively in Argentina and parts of Brazil during her time in South America. After four years Mackenzie relocated to Ottawa, Canada, where she worked as a cryptogamic botanist for the Canadian National Museum. In 1953 Mackenzie was offered the directorship of the Farlow Library and Herbarium and moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Mackenzie returned to Antarctica in 1960 to visit McMurdo Station and again in 1964 to study marine algae with a grant from the National Science Foundation. She spent the next three years traveling and researching in Europe and Central America.

Mackenzie was given sabbatical leave in January 1972 to undergo gender affirmation surgery. She changed her name from Ivan Mackenzie Lamb to Elke Mackenzie and retired from Harvard December 31, 1973. Mackenzie's scientific work, including publications and specimen collecting, was mostly done under the name Ivan Lamb.

Mackenzie had married Maila Elvira Laabejo in 1936 and they had two sons and a daughter. The couple separated in 1971. Mackenzie moved to Costa Rica in 1976 and returned to Cambridge four years later. Mackenzie died in Braintree, Massachusetts, on January 27, 1990.