Margaret Hurlstone Hardy Fallding

Margaret Hardy Fallding
Hardy Fallding in 1968
Born	July 18, 1920 Sydney, New South Wales
Died	30 May 2004(2004-05-30) (aged 83)
Nationality	Australian, then Canadian
Fields	Zoology, tissue culture
Institutions	Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, University of Guelph
Alma mater	University of Queensland
Doctoral advisor	Honor Fell
Known for	Research on hair follicles
Spouse	Harold Joseph Fallding

Margaret Hurlstone Hardy Fallding (July 18, 1920 – May 30, 2004) was a research zoologist in Australia and Canada who studied hair follicles.

Early life

Margaret "Peggy" Hurlstone Hardy was born in Sydney, Australia, in 1920 and grew up in Brisbane, Queensland. She was the only child of George Huddleston Hurlstone Hardy, an entomologist who worked in the biology department of the University of Queensland,^[1] and his wife, former Tasmanian schoolteacher Martha Elizabeth Olive Harris. George Hardy held a Walter and Eliza Hall Fellowship from 1922 to 1932.^[2]

Peggy attended Somerville House, where she was dux of the school in 1937,^[3] and then enrolled at the University of Queensland in 1938. She took her Bachelor of Science (honours) in zoology and received the gold medal for outstanding merit in 1942. She won the Duncan McNaughton Scholarship in 1940, and was awarded a Walter and Eliza Hall Fellowship in Economic Biology in 1943 after completing her MSc in zoology.^[2]

Hardy worked at the University of Sydney and at the CSIR McMaster Animal Health Laboratory during her fellowship, studying the heat tolerance, skin, and fibres of sheep.^[2][4][5] At McMaster, she met Helen Newton Turner, who became a scientific collaborator^[6] and lifelong friend.

Career

In 1945, Hardy was appointed assistant research officer at the CSIR after her mentor Harold Burnell Carter challenged arguments that women were "a poor investment."^[7] She went to the University of Cambridge in 1947^[4] and studied at Newnham College, earning her zoology PhD in 1949^[8] under the direction of cell biologist Dame Honor Fell. While still in her 20s, Hardy was the first person in the world to grow hair outside a living organism.

After returning to Australia, Hardy became vice principal of the Women’s College at the University of Sydney and a member of the board of reference for the Evangelical Union's "Mission in the University" in 1951.^[9] It was in Sydney that Hardy got to know sociologist and poet Harold Fallding,^[10] who shared her intellectual approach to Christian evangelism. In 1954, future Anglican primate Rev. Marcus Loane officiated at Hardy's marriage to Fallding in the Moore College chapel as she became Margaret Hardy-Fallding.^[11] Soon after, Margaret "had to slow down on embryonic hair follicle culture because I was culturing an embryonic human."^[12] She gave birth to three children, all delivered by her friend Dr. Margaret Mulvey, dubbed the "mother of Australian obstetrics,"^[13] before returning to a scientific career.

In the 1960s, the Falldings moved to North America, where Margaret worked at Columbia University in New York before joining the staff of Canada's Ontario Veterinary College in 1966 as its second female faculty member. There she taught embryology and histology in the department of biomedical sciences. In both countries, anti-nepotism rules barred her from positions at universities where her husband worked and thus forced her to commute to other cities for more than 30 years. Margaret became a professor at the University of Guelph, technically retiring in 1985 as professor emeritus but continuing her lab work for another decade.^[14] In 1985-6, she was president of the Guelph chapter of Sigma Xi, the international scientific research society.

Margaret Hardy Fallding died in Guelph, Ontario, Canada, in 2004. She was survived by her husband, University of Waterloo professor emeritus Dr. Harold Joseph Fallding,^[15] three daughters and one granddaughter.^[14]

Legacy

Hardy's curiosity-driven research inspired a new generation of stem cell scientists to use hair follicles as "an accessible and intricately beautiful model system."^[16]

Selected published works

• Hardy, M.H. (1951). The development of pelage hairs and vibrissae from skin in tissue culture. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 53(3): 546-561.
• Hardy, M.H., Fraser, A.S. and Short, B.F. (1952). Spread of Pigment in Sheep Skin Autografts. Nature. 170(4333): 849.
• Hardy, M.H., Biggers, J.D. and Claringbold, P.J. (1953). Vaginal Cornification of the Mouse produced by Œstrogens in vitro. Nature, 172(4391): 1196.
• Hardy, M. H. and Lyne, A.G. (1956). Proposed Terminology for Wool Follicles in Sheep. Nature, 177(4511): 705.
• Carter, H.B., Turner, H.N. and Hardy, M.H. (1958). The influence of various factors on some methods of estimating fibre and follicle population density in the skin of Merino sheep. I. Methods of delineating area of natural skin. Australian Journal of Agricultural Research, 9(2): 237 - 251.
• Hardy, M.H. (1967). Responses in embryonic mouse skin to excess vitamin A in organotypic cultures from the trunk, upper lip and lower jaw. Experimental Cell Research, 46(2): 367-384.
• Josefowicz, WJ and Hardy, M. H. (1978). The expression of the gene asebia in the laboratory mouse: I. Epidermis and dermis. Genetical Research, 31(1): 53-65.
• Covant, H.A. and Hardy, M.H. (1988). Stability of the glandular morphogenesis produced by retinoids in the newborn hamster cheek pouch in vitro. Journal of Experimental Zoology, 246(2): 139-149.
• Brown, W.R. and Hardy, M.H. (1989). Mast Cells in Asebia Mouse Skin. Journal of Investigative Dermatology, 93(5): 708.
• Hardy, M.H., Roff, E., Smith, T.G., Ryg, M. (1991). Facial skin glands of ringed and grey seals, and their possible function as odoriferous organs. Canadian Journal of Zoology (Revue canadienne de zoologie), 69(1): 189-200.
• Hardy, M.H. (1992). The secret life of the hair follicle. Trends in Genetics, 8(2): 55-61.

References