Nancy Tyson Burbidge

Who was Nancy Tyson Burbidge?

Nancy Tyson Burbidge AO was an Australian systemic botanist, conservationist and herbarium curator.

Burbidge was born in Cleckheaton, Yorkshire; her father, William Burbidge, was an Anglican clergyman and immigrated to Australia in 1913 when he was appointed to a parish in Western Australia. She was educated at Katanning Church of England Girls' School - founded by her mother Nancy Eleanor. She completed her schooling in 1922 when she graduated from Bunbury High School, and went on to study at the University of Western Australia. She completed her BSc in 1937, and afterwards received a prize to travel to England where she spent 18 months at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. While at Kew she worked on a revision of the Australian grass genus Enneapogon. When Nancy returned to Australia she continued her study of Australian plants through the University of Western Australia, completing her MSc. in 1945.

In 1943 she was appointed assistant agronomist at the Waite Agricultural Research Institute in Adelaide, where she started working on native pasture species for arid and semi-arid South Australia. She was appointed to the new position of systematic botanist at the CSIRO Division of Plant Industry, Canberra in 1946. At CSIRO she worked on organising and extending the herbarium, first as a research scientist and then as curator and was responsible for laying the foundations of the Herbarium Australiense, later the National Australian Herbarium. She wrote Key to the South Australian species of Eucalyptus L'Hér. but had not specialised on the genus. Her professional interest in systemic botany was reflected by her tenure as secretary of the systematic botany committee of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science from 1948 to 1952. She also edited Australasian Herbarium News until her until 1953, when she took a years leave to be the Australian Botanical Liaison Officer at the Kew Gardens herbarium. While at Kew she photographed and indexed type specimens of Australian plants and made microfilm copies of Robert Brown's notebooks for Australian herbaria.