THIS IS THE story of the remarkable British ophthalmologist Professor Dame Ida Mann, DBE, born in London in 1893, who almost singlehandedly established contact lens technology in England during the 1930s. A visit to the London Hospital in Whitechapel as a young woman would change her life forever.

She attended the London School of Medicine for Women, the only medical school that was open to women at that time. After receiving her medical degree in 1920, she began her journey in ophthalmology, overcoming the strict gender boundaries of the time by becoming the first female doctor at London’s Moorfield’s Eye Hospital, the first female professor of ophthalmology in the U.K., and the first female professor at Oxford University. In 1927 Mann was appointed senior surgeon at Moorfield’s Eye Hospital (Bowden, 2009).

In her autobiography, Professor Mann mentioned that she’d been interested in contact lenses since her first sight of them at the International Ophthalmological Congress in Amsterdam (Buckley and Potter, 1996).

Although Zeiss chose the path of grinding glass lenses derived from a mathematical model of the average eye, the human eye is not a perfect shape and there were few people who could wear these lenses (Bowden, 2009). However, Professor Mann had heard of Hungarian ophthalmologist Joseph Dallos, who had developed a revolutionary new technique in which glass scleral lenses were manufactured from a mold taken of each individual eye and then modified by a hand grinding and polishing technique. She also noted that the advance gave practitioners “the means of alleviating many defects of sight not helped by spectacles.”

In her autobiography, she wrote, “I went to Budapest in 1937 with two ophthalmology colleagues. We put ourselves under Dr. Dallos as apprentices and while the work was fascinating we quickly learned that the fitting of contact lenses was too time-consuming to do in a busy ophthalmology practice. We had to get contact lens production going in England and we offered to establish a contact lens clinic for Dallos in London.”

He at first refused, but some months later as war loomed over Europe, the Jewish-born Joseph Dallos began having second thoughts. Professor Mann wrote, “I rushed to Budapest to rescue the one man in Europe who could develop the needed contact lens technology in England. I remember riding in a Budapest taxi with Dallos with tears in my eyes, pleading for him to come to London.” In 1937, Joseph Dallos and his brother-in-law, George Nissel, moved to London and together started the first contact lens only clinic in England (London Remembers, 2023).

During the war years, Professor Mann headed the Ophthalmic Chemical Defense Research Team and was a private advisor to Winston Churchill.

In the early 1950s, Professor Mann and her husband moved to Perth, Australia, where she continued her ophthalmic practice, scientific research (Figure 1), and publications. She passed away at the age of 90 while writing at her desk in Perth.

Mann’s barrier-breaking legacy in ophthalmology and her pioneering contributions to our contact lens industry are nothing short of legendary. CLS

References

1. Bowden TJ. Contact Lenses the Story: A Historical Development of Contact Lenses. Bower House Publications. 2009:104-107.
2. Buckley EI, Potter DU, eds. Ida and the Eye: A Woman in British Ophthalmology [Abridged]. Parapress LTD, Tunbridge, Wells, Kent UK. 1996:155-158.
3. Josef Dallos. London Remembers. 2023. Available at londonremembers.com/subjects/josef-dallos . Accessed March 2, 2023.