Author, expert on Maritime Law, ecologist. She was the fifth and youngest child of Thomas and Katia Mann. She grew up in Munich then followed her parents into the Swiss exile in 1933 where she did her "Abitur" (A-levels). She became a Czechoslovakian citizen in 1836 after having been denied the German citizenship in 1936. She studied at the Konservatorium in Zurich where she trained as a teacher and a pianist. She emigrated to the US together with her parents in 1938. One year later she married the Italian writer Giuseppe Antonio Borgese and had two children with him (Angelica, born in 1940 and Dominica, born in 1944) and then lived in Chicago. She ended her career as a pianist after getting married and became a research fellow in the "The Committee to Frame a World Constitution" at Chicago University. She was later on elected the President of the organization. She acquired American citizenship in 1941. After the end of the war she returned to Florence to the origins of her husband's family in Italy. Her husband died in 1952 so Elisabeth lived at her parents' home in Kilchberg near Zurich for a while but then returned to Italy in 1953 where she took up residence with her daughters in San Domenico near Fiesole. She did translation work as well as editorial work at cultural magazines. From 1955 she lived with her new partner Corrado Tumiati in San Domenico and Forte dei Marmi. In 1963 she published a book called "Ascent of Woman" about emancipation. In 1952 she worked at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. She then took an interest in the pollution and overfishing of oceans and drafted a "Constitution of the Law of the Sea" which was also involved at the third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea and she established the International Ocean Institute (IOI) in 1972 in Malta and became its first director. Two years before in 1970 she was the only female foundation member of the Club of Rome. She also founded the Independent World Commission on the Oceans with UN observer status. In 1980 she was appointed Professor for International Sea Law at the University of Halifax/Canada and was involved in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea in 1982. She also published a non-fiction book "Das Drama der Meere" ("The Drama of the Seas", 1972) which was translated into 13 languages. She published many more books (both fiction and non-fiction) mostly focussing on the oceans and related topics. During a skiing holiday in Switzerland she died from pneumonia.