Mildred Blaxter

She was born Mildred Lillington Hall on 27 March 1925 in Jesmond, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the elder child and only daughter of Robert Charlton Hall, a bank manager, and his wife, Mildred Violet Hall, née Gleed (1897–1963), an actress.[2] She was educated at St Anne's College, Oxford, and earned a bachelor's degree in English in 1949, and was the first woman to be assistant editor of the student newspaper, Isis.[2]

Blaxter was in her 40s, and her children were at school, when she read Peter Townsend's study of old people's homes The Last Refuge, and decided she wanted to be a sociologist.

In 1967, she enrolled at the newly established department of sociology at the University of Aberdeen, alongside Raymond Illsley, Gordon Horobin, Phil Strong, and Alan Davies, and earned a master's degree in 1972, becoming a medical sociologist.[2]

In 1972, she was appointed to the Aberdeen-based Medical Sociology Unit, as scientific officer.[2] In 1976, Blaxter published her first book, The Meaning of Disability. Her 1982 book, Mothers and Daughters is considered "a classic".[2]

In 1982, when her husband retired, she joined the University of East Anglia, rising to professor of medical sociology in 2000, and was senior sociologist at the University of Cambridge.[1] In 1990, she published Health and Lifestyles.[1] Her last book came out in 2004, Health: Key Concepts.[1]

• The Meaning of Disability
• Mothers and Daughters
• Health and Lifestyles
• Health: Key Concepts

On 12 October 1957, she married Kenneth Blaxter (1919–1991), an animal nutritionist, and they had three children.[2]

She died of lung cancer on 29 August 2010 at Weston Hospicecare, Uphill, Weston-super-Mare.[2][1]