Elke Mackenzie

Elke Mackenzie, born Ivan Mackenzie Lamb, was a British polar explorer and botanist who specialised in the field of lichenology. Beginning her education in Edinburgh, Scotland, Mackenzie later pursued botany at the University of Edinburgh, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in 1933 and a Doctor of Science in 1942. In the two years she was involved in Operation Tabarin, a covert World War II mission to Antarctica, she identified and documented many lichen species, several of them previously unknown to science.