Delphine Parrott

Delphine Mary Vera Parrott FRSE (2 May 1928 – 17 January 2016) was a British endocrinologist, immunologist, and academic. She did research at the National Institute for Medical Research in the 1950s and the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in the 1960s.[2]

Delphine Parrott
Born2 May 1928[1]
Dulwich, London, England
Died17 January 2016(2016-01-17) (aged 87)
Mill Hill, London, England, UK
NationalityBritish
Alma materBedford College and King's College London School of Medicine
Scientific career
FieldsEndocrinology and immunology
InstitutionsNational Institute for Medical Research, Imperial Cancer Research Fund and Glasgow University

In 1967, she moved to Glasgow University and became its first female professor in 1973.[2] She became the Gardiner Professor of Immunology there in 1980 and retired in 1990.[2]

She was an honorary member of the British Society for Immunology.[3]

Early life

She was born in Dulwich in May 1928.[4][5] She studied physiology at Bedford College, graduating in 1949, and then gained a doctorate at King's College London School of Medicine in 1952.[2]

Career

Parrott's first job was for the Medical Research Council, working in their Clinical Endocrinology Research Unit in Edinburgh from 1952 to 1954.[6] Alan Parkes then recruited her to assist him researching reproductive biology at the National Institute for Medical Research in Mill Hill. He valued her skill in vivisecting small animals and she started by transplanting ovaries into mice that had been sterilised by radiation, as a way of restoring their fertility.[2] Another experiment led to a major paper which was published in Science in 1960: "Role of Olfactory Sense in Pregnancy Block by Strange Males".[7]

In this case, she removed the olfactory bulb of female mice to show that this prevented them from aborting when exposed to a strange male.[2] This confirmed that smell was involved in the Bruce effect. Her co-author, Hilda Bruce had previously shown that mice would have a miscarriage if they smelt a strange male.[8]

At the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, she studied the immunological effect of the thymus, experimenting on newly-born mice by observing the effects of removal of the thymus upon their immune system such as the production of lymphocytes.[9] These results were widely debated as the findings were unexpected.[10]

In 1967, she moved to the University of Glasgow, to work in the Department of Bacteriology and Immunology as a senior lecturer.[11] In 1973, she became a professor, the first woman to hold a chair in Glasgow University's 500-year history.[12][13] In 1974, she was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.[2]

In 1980, she became the head of the department and the Gardiner professor, when her predecessor, R.G. White, retired.[14] She retired in 1990.[15]

Later life

Parrott died on 17 January 2016, aged 87.[2][16][17]

References
  1. New York State, Passenger and Crew Lists, 1917-1966
  2. Thomas T. MacDonald, Delphine Parrott, British Society for Immunology, archived from the original on 2 December 2013
  3. "Honorary members - British Society for Immunology". www.immunology.org.
  4. International Medical Who's Who, Longman, 1980, p. 904, ISBN 978-0582901124
  5. "PROFESSOR DELPHINE MARY VERA PARROTT director information. Director id 902630478". companycheck.co.uk. Retrieved 1 August 2017.
  6. Delphine Parrott, University of Glasgow, 25 October 2010
  7. Bruce, Hilda; Parrott, Delphine (20 May 1960), "Role of Olfactory Sense in Pregnancy Block by Strange Males", Science, 131 (3412): 1526, doi:10.1126/science.131.3412.1526, PMID 13805126, S2CID 33225685
  8. Bracey, Ed (December 2011). "The sense of smell – A milestone to understanding the brain". Mill Hill Essays via NIMR History.
  9. Joan Austoker (1988), A History of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund 1902–1986, Oxford University Press, pp. 271–73, ISBN 9780197230756
  10. Gallagher, Richard B. (eds); et al. (1995). Immunology the Making of a Modern Science. Burlington: Elsevier. p. 78. ISBN 978-0080534534.CS1 maint: extra text: authors list (link)
  11. "Appointments at University". The Glasgow Herald. 5 June 1967. p. 9. Retrieved 14 August 2020.
  12. "Glasgow's first woman professor". The Glasgow Herald. 9 April 1973. p. 1. Retrieved 25 October 2017.
  13. "Second woman professor", The Glasgow Herald: 11, 8 April 1974, retrieved 5 August 2013
  14. "Professor Appointed". Glasgow Herald. 5 December 1980. p. 10. Retrieved 25 October 2017.
  15. "Delphine Parrott". The University of Glasgow Story. University of Glasgow. Retrieved 10 March 2016.
  16. "Delphine Parrott obituary". Herald Scotland. Retrieved 1 February 2016.
  17. Rose, Marlene; MacDonald, Tom (10 March 2016). "Delphine Parrott obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 10 March 2016.
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