Anna Frederica Bage (1883-1970), biologist, was born on 11 April 1883 at St Kilda, Melbourne, oldest of three children of Mary Charlotte (born Lange) and Edward Bage, junior partner in Felton, Grimwade & Co., wholesale chemists and manufacturers. Her father died in 1891. Freda was educated in Oxford, England and at Fairlight School, Melbourne. In 1901 she entered Janet Clarke (q.v.) Hall, University of Melbourne and after failing her first year graduated BSc in 1905 and MSc in 1907. She worked as a junior demonstrator in biology, sharing the MacBain research scholarship in 1907 and winning a Victorian government research scholarship in 1908. She read two papers to the Royal Society of Victoria, and in 1910-11 was a research scholar at King's College, London, where her work led to a fellowship of the Linnean Society. She returned to the University of Melbourne as senior demonstrator; in 1913 she was appointed lecturer in biology at the recently established University of Queensland and became first principal of the Women's College within the university in 1914.
During the war Miss Bage was a member of the Queensland recruiting committee. Her only brother was killed in action at Gallipoli in May 1915. She travelled widely in Queensland in her capacity as Principal of Women's College, encouraging women to attend the university and seeking rural support for her college. From 1914 she drove and serviced a car, and competed in hill-climbs and reliability trials. She was president of the Field Naturalists' Club in 1915 and was a foundation member of the Barrier Reef committee.
In 1911 Freda Bage attended the Stockholm meeting of the standing committee of the International Council of Women. In Brisbane she served as honorary secretary to the Queensland National Council of Women and maintained a long association with it. She was president of the Brisbane Women's Club (1916) and of the Lyceum Club (1922-23). With the support of the Victorian and New South Wales National Councils of Women she was nominated for appointment as an Australian delegate to the League of Nations in 1924, but was not appointed. She served as honorary treasurer and vice-president of the Queensland branch of the League of Nations Union and in 1926 and in 1938 she was appointed a substitute delegate to the League of Nations Assembly in Geneva.
Miss Bage was an advocate of vocational guidance: 'girls drift into uncongenial employment'. She took the lead in forming the Queensland Women Graduates' Association (later the Queensland Association of University Women); she was president of the Australian Federation of Women Graduates in 1928-29, and delegate to several conferences of the International Federation of University Women. She served on the Senate of the University of Queensland (its first woman member) from 1923-50.
She was an original member of the National Art Galleries' Association, the Twelfth Night Theatre and the Brisbane Repertory Society. Freda Bage was also a hockey enthusiast; she was manager of the first hockey team in Australia to travel interstate, from Melbourne to Adelaide in 1908, and was president of the Queensland Women's Hockey Association from 1925 to 1931.
She was appointed OBE in l941 and retired in 1946. The University conferred an honorary LL D on her in 1951. As a tribute to her work, the Australian Federation of University Women established the Freda Bage scholarship. She died in Brisbane on 27 October 1970. Under her will she provided scholarships in Melbourne as memorials to her brother and legacies to Melbourne and Queensland universities and to their women's colleges.
Jacqueline Bell