Born: 12 April 1912, Australia
Died: 20 October 1990
Country most active: Australia
Also known as: Alma Melvaine
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.
Alma Lee was a botanist at the National Herbarium of New South Wales from 1938. Her research focused on the families Lomandraceae, Xanthorrhoeaceae and Fabaceae, in which family she concentrated on the genera Swainsona, Bossiaea, Psoralea, Crotalaria, Platylobium, Templetonia, Hovea, and Aenictphyton. She sought to understand species and subspecies in relation to population variability, hybridism, and environmental and evolutionary concepts. In this she influenced the development of Australian botanical taxonomic studies more broadly. Lee was senior author of the second part of the general treatment of Fabaceae in the “Flora of New South Wales” series. The plant genus Almaleea (Fabaceae) was named in her honour.
Chronology
1935
Education – Bachelor of Science (Botany)
1938 – 1947?
Career position – Botanist, National Herbarium of New South Wales
1963? – 1982
Career position – Botanist (part-time), National Herbarium of New South Wales
1982 – 1986
Career position – Honorary Research Associate, National Herbarium of New South Wales