Lee Eng Kee

Lee Eng Kee was an artist and illustrator at the Institute for Medical Research (IMR) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He worked there through the 1970s, drawing illustrations and maps for the institute's scientific publications and assisting with its field research. He is best known for designing a 1976 Malaysian postage stamp that was described at the time as the first stamp to depict a chigger, a mite that spreads scrub typhus.¹²³⁴⁵

Lee's known work is scientific illustration. His drawings and maps accompanied research by IMR scientists on the mammals of Malaysia and Southeast Asia, including studies of rats and flying squirrels. The illustrations were made to record animals and where they lived, and they appeared alongside the researchers' published findings. Lee also belonged to the institute's Division of Medical Ecology, which studied how wildlife and their parasites spread disease. There he took part in fieldwork and laboratory work, helping to collect and prepare animal specimens in West Malaysia.¹²³⁴

In 1976, Malaysia issued three stamps for the IMR's 75th anniversary, recognizing the institute's work on beriberi, malaria, and scrub typhus. Lee designed the 20-cent value. It shows an orange chigger and a gray rat in scrub forest, with a syringe of the antibiotic chloramphenicol, two capsules, and a man against a light green background. The stamp has orange-red borders with white lettering. Its subject drew on the institute's research into scrub typhus, which chiggers pass to people. Scientists announcing the issue noted that mites had rarely appeared on stamps; the only earlier example they knew of was an issue from Chad showing a red velvet mite.⁵