After qualifying in medicine, at a time when few women did, Ida Mann blazed a trail for feminism. Her DSc from London University was published in 1928 as the first definitive book in this country on The Development of the Human Eye, and along with Congenital Defects of the Eye in 1937 became a standard text.

Her wide interests included comparative anatomy at London Zoo. She brought news of the Gullstrand slit lamp from Vogt to London. With Joseph Dallos, whom she persuaded to leave Budapest before the First World War, she established the first contact lens clinic in London. During the war she studied mustard gas keratitis, thyroid eye disease, mepacrine toxicity and was a guinea pig for Professor Florey and penicillin. Medal lectures included the Doyne in 1928, the Harrison Gale in 1929, the Nettleship in 1932 and the Montgomery in 1935.

After an appointment as Assistant Surgeon to the Central London Hospital (later to become the Institute of Ophthalmology) she became the first female Honorary Consultant to the Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital (Moorfields).

She was then chosen as the Margaret Ogilvie's Reader in Ophthalmology at the University of Oxford. Thereafter a personal chair was created making her the first woman ever to hold the title of Professor at Oxford (the first in Britain). She subsequently raised £250,000 to build a new eye hospital, but this never came to fruition due to Goverment cutbacks during the post war era. Ida went on sabattical and took a long-overdue holiday to Australia in 1949. Indeed she liked Australia so much that she stayed, carrying out ground-breaking work with the aborigines and cancer research. She died at her desk in 1984. The dedication in a leading ophthalmology journal reads : "No living doctor has dominated international ophthalmology as has Ida Mann, whose colleagues throughout the world have been inspired by her remarkable work".

In recognition of her many contributions to research, teaching, and clinical practice, she was awarded the C.B.E. (1950) and made D.B.E. (1980), as well as receiving honorary degrees, prizes and medals from many countries.