Marion Macleod

Marion Macleod (nee Fairman) was born in Newcastle upon Tyne to Roland and Rhoda Fairman (nee Finch), a coach painter and cleaner respectively. At the start of the second world war, she was evacuated to Berwick-upon-Tweed and then Shap in Cumberland. She returned to Newcastle and at age 16 left school and started working as a laboratory technician in a bacteriology lab in Newcastle University. She finished her school in evening classes and won a scholarship to attend university. [1]

After graduation from Durham University with a double first degree in botany and bacteriology in 1952, she began a job as a post assistant lecturer at Glasgow University and completed her PhD in 1955. [1]

In 1956 Macleod studied bacterial cytology at Harvard Medical School as a Harkness Fellow, and then from 1957–58 she studied virology at the California Institute of Technology. [1][2] While in the US, she met Norman Macleod, another Harkness Fellow, and in 1959 they married. They had three children. Following a break in her career to raise children, she returned as a part time lecturer at Napier College, Edinburgh.

In 1983 she ran for MP as the SDP candidate in Edinburgh Central, coming third. [1] Macleod completed a second PhD on medical sociology in 1986 from Edinburgh University, and then worked as a lecturer at Queen Margaret College in medical sociology. [1][2]