Honor Fell

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Dame Dr Honor Bridget Fell, DBE, Ph.D, D.Sc, FRS (1900-1986) was a British scientist and zoologist. Her contributions to science included the development of the organ culture method, similar to stem cell research.

Contents 1 Career 2 Organ Culture Method 3 Publications 4 Affiliations 5 References 6 Source 7 External links

[edit] Career

She was educated at Winchcliffe School and Madras College before earning a BSc in Zoology at the University of Edinburgh in 1922 and a PhD in 1924. Most of her long career was spent at the Strangeways Research Laboratory, where she was Director from 1927 to 1970.^[1] She was active in the lab until a few weeks before she died.^[2]

[edit] Organ Culture Method

This enabled scientists to grow living differentiated cells, largely obtained from the embryos of warm blooded animals, to create cultures that mimic the behaviour of organs in the animal body (see stem cell research).

While working with Dr Strangeways at Cambridge in 1923 she went on to earn her Ph.D the following year, and later her DSc in 1932 from the University of Cambridge. The development of specific cell groups or organ cultures enabled the exploration of the life, characteristics and reactions of cells to beneficial and adverse substances without the risks involved in exposing the cells of living human organs.

Dr Fell specialised in the cells of bone and cartilage. Her most significant work was in the role of the immune system in causing rheumatoid arthritis. Her second contribution to science was the direction, with Dr F.G. Spears, of the Strangeways Laboratory. Originally this was a small laboratory founded next to the Cambridge Research Hospital for investigating the pathology of rheumatoid arthritis and linked diseases. Dr Fell was named Director, Strangeways Research Laboratory, Cambridge, in 1927. The laboratory's survival was partly due to her skilful financial management of research grants from the Medical Research Council and donors.^{[citation needed]} In the 1930s the Laboratory pioneered the development of radiobiology - the effects of X-rays on living animal tissue. This was a direct result of Dr. Fell's offer of study facilities to scientists who were refugees of the Second World War.

Despite limited resources the laboratory expanded, particularly with the construction in 1938 of a new wing funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. By 1970 the Laboratory was held in international esteem and comprised 62 scientists and 29 technicians from all over the world.^{[citation needed]}

In retirement, in the role of a research worker at the Department of Immunology at Cambridge University Department of Pathology, Dr Fell once again took up the immunobiology of rheumatoid disease. She returned to Strangeways in 1976 and remained there, still working in the laboratory, until within four weeks of her death in 1986.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Publications

Dr Honor Fell published works on organ culture techniques; on the effects of Vitamin A and cortisone on tissue culture; and rheumatoid work.

[edit] Affiliations

• 1943: Appointed Foulerton Research Fellow, Royal Society
• 1953: Elected Fellow, Royal Society of London
• 1955: Elected Fellow, Girton College, Cambridge University
• 1957: Elected Foreign Honorary Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Boston
• 1959: Awarded Honorary LL.D, Edinburgh
• 1963: Awarded Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire
• 1963: Appointed Royal Society Research Professor
• 1964: Awarded Honorary D.Sc, University of Oxford
• 1964: Awarded Honorary Sc.D, Harvard University
• 1975: Awarded Honorary MD, University of Leiden
• 1977: Appointed, Walker-Ames Professor, University of Washington, Seattle

[edit] References

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (October 2009)

1. ^ Strageways Lab Directors
2. ^ Obituary in Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases (1987), vol. 46, p. 264

[edit] Source

• Vaughan, Janet. Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 1987, vol. 33, pp. 237-59

[edit] External links

• Biography