Nancy BurbidgePrint Page

The Amphitheatre commemorates Dr Nancy Burbidge`s contribution to Australian botany. In 1943 she was appointed assistant agronomist at the Waite Agricultural Research Institute in Adelaide, where she started working on the regeneration of native pastures in the arid and semi-arid regions of South Australia.

Nancy Tyson Burbidge (1912 - 1977) was appointed to the new position of systematic botanists in the CSIRO Division of Plant Industry, Canberra in 1946. Before a years secondment in 1953 to be Australian botanical liaison officer at the Kew herbarium, In London.  

Burbidge edited the Australasian Herbarium News. and was secretary of the systematic botany committee of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science from 1948 to 1952. In 1960 Burbidge was a founding member, twice president, secretary, committee member for 11 years and a weekend walks leader of the National Parks Association of the ACT and prominent in lobbying for the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve and Namadgi National Park.

One of Australia's leading botanists and conservationists, the late Nancy T Burbidge will be commemorated at a ceremony in the National Botanic Gardens on Sunday in the presence of Her Excellency, Lady Cowen. The address will be given by the eminent scientist Sir Rutherford Rob ertson. Dr Burbidge, who died in 1977, had a most distinguished career as a botanist and author of many valuable reference works and scientific articles on Australian native flora. Organisations she was involved in and her other friends have joined together to finance the construction of a small amphitheatre on the eucalypt lawn near the nursery in the National Botanic Gardens, to be used as an outdoor classroom and for group activities. The memorial was approved by the Canberra National Memorials Committee, chaired by the Prime Minister, Mr Fraser, who considered it an appropriate memorial to commemorate Dr Burbidge's outstanding contribution to Australian botany.
The Canberra Times, 10th September 1980.

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