Person

Phillips, Marie Elizabeth (Betty) (1917 - 1977)

Born
7 June 1917
Brighton, Victoria, Australia
Died
1977
Goulburn, New South Wales, Australia
Occupation
Botanist, Ecologist and Plant collector

Summary

Betty Phillips had a varied career, including establishing a consultancy providing educational services to private schools and as ecologist with the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Authority, before joining the Canberra Botanic Gardens as Botanist in 1960. In this role she was responsible for maintaining and developing the Gardens' herbarium. This included implementing a rigorous cross-referencing system which tied the living collections in the Gardens to voucher specimens in the herbarium. She collected widely across the southern and eastern states and in Western Australia. On these excursions, her companions included some of Australia's best-known botanists, such as Maisie Carr, Murray Fagg and John Wrigley. By the time of her retirement she had collected approximately 18,000 herbarium specimens and 6,000 batches of propagating material for the Gardens. In the transfer of the herbarium to the Australian National Herbarium, CSIRO, in 1994, most of Phillips specimens were also transferred.

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Details

Chronology

1937
Education - BSc (petrology), University of Sydney
1940 - 1942
Career position - Research Assistant, Department of Botany, University of Sydney
1943 - 1945
Career position - Scientific Officer, Scientific Liaison Bureau, Commonwealth of Australia
1945 - 1947
Career position - Partner, Phillips & Jones
1947
Education - MSc (botany), University of Sydney
1947 - 1960
Career position - Teaching Fellow, Department of Botany, University of Sydney
1952
Education - PhD, University of Manchester, United Kingdom
1960 - 1973
Career position - Botanist, Canberra Botanic Gardens
December 1973
Life event - Retired

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Published resources

See also

Helen Cohn

Created: 23 June 2026

EOAS ID: biogs/P008081b.htm

This Edition: 2026 May - New Office
Chunnup - Gariwerd calendar - Winter: late May to end of July - season of cockatoos
Reference: https://www.bom.gov.au/resources/indigenous-weather-knowledge/indigenous-seasonal-calendars/gariwerd-calendar#bom-anchor-list__item-chunnup-season-of-cockatoos

Publisher: Swinburne University of Technology.

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