Janet Vaughan
Dame Janet Maria Vaughan DBE FRS[1] (18 October 1899 – 9 January 1993) was a British physiologist.[2][3] Born in Clifton, Bristol, she was the daughter of William Wyamar Vaughan, a cousin of Virginia Woolf and later headmaster of Rugby. Vaughan was educated at home, and later at North Foreland Lodge and Somerville College, Oxford, where she studied medicine under Charles Sherrington and J. B. S. Haldane.
Later she received a scholarship from the Rockefeller Foundation to study at Harvard University.[4]
As a female doctor, discovered that she had difficulties gaining access to the patients and experimented on pigeons. Virginia Woolf described her as 'an attractive woman; competent, disinterested, taking blood tests all day to solve abstract problems'.[4] She suffered from prejudice for her research.[5]
As a young pathologist at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School at Hammersmith Hospital in 1938 she initiated creation of national blood banks in London. The modified milk bottle for blood collection and storage was named "MRC bottle" or "Janet Vaughan".[4]
From 1945 until her retirement in 1967, she was Principal of Somerville College. She was made DBE in 1957, and elected FRS in 1979.[1] She was Principal while Margaret Roberts studied there - a student who would later become British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
She studied blood disease, blood transfusion, the treatment of starvation, and the effect of radioactivity on the bone and bone marrow.[6]
Publications
- Vaughan, Janet. The Anemias. London: Oxford University Press, 1934.
- Vaughan, Janet. "Leuco-erythoblastic Anemias", Journal of Pathology and Bacteriology 17 (1936):541-64.
- Vaughan, Janet. "Conditions at Belsen Concentration Camp", British Medical Journal, Physiology and treatment of starvation ser. (1945):819
- Vaughan, Janet. The Physiology of Bone. Oxford: Claredon Press, 1969.
- Vaughan, Janet. The Effect of Irradiation of the Skeleton. Oxford: Claredon Press, 1973.
Personal life
She married David Gourlay, of the Wayfarers' Travel Agency, in 1930. They had two daughters.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Owen, M. (1995). "Dame Janet Maria Vaughan, D. B. E. 18 October 1899-9 January 1993". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 41: 482–426. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1995.0029.
- ↑ Evelyn Irons, Obituary: Dame Janet Vaughan, The Independent, 12 January 1993.
- ↑ "The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography". 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/42277.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Starr, D (1998). Blood: An Epic History of Medicine and Commerce. Little, Brown and company. pp. 84–87. ISBN 0 316 91146 1.
- ↑ Watts, Ruth (2007). Women in science : a social and cultural history (1st ed. ed.). London: Routledge. p. 171. ISBN 0415253063.
- ↑ edts Ogilvie, Marilyn (2000). The biographical dictionary of women in science. New York [u.a.]: Routledge. p. 1323. ISBN 0415920388.
External links
- Royal College of Physicians profile of Dame Janet Vaughan contains a detailed account of her life, based in part on her 1993 Independent obituary
- Red Gold: Innovators & Pioneers — Jane Vaughan, PBS
- Longreads article on Janet Vaughan by Rose George : A very naughty little girl : The extraordinary life of Janet Vaughan, who changed our relationship with blood
| Academic offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Helen Darbishire |
Principal Somerville College, Oxford 1945-1967 |
Succeeded by Barbara Craig |
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