Brigitte Alice Askonas (1 April 1923 – 9 January 2013) was a British immunologist and a visiting professor at

Imperial College London Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...

from 1995.

Education

Brigitte Askonas was born to Czechoslovak parents, Jewish converts to Catholicism, who fled Austria after the Nazi takeover.

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

-born Askonas studied biochemistry at

McGill University McGill University (french: link=no, Université McGill) is an English-language public research university located in Montreal, Quebec Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous ...

(BSc, MSc) and carried out her postgraduate work in the school of biochemistry at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...

where she was a student of

Girton College, Cambridge Girton College is one of the 31 constituent colleges of the University of Cambridge. The college was established in 1869 by Emily Davies and Barbara Bodichon as the first women's college in Cambridge. In 1948, it was granted full college statu ...

. Her role models in the department included two distinguished scientists,

Marjory Stephenson Marjory Stephenson (24 January 1885 – 12 December 1948) was a British biochemist. In 1945, she was one of the first two women elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, the other being Kathleen Lonsdale. She wrote ''Bacterial Metabolism'' (193 ...

and Dorothy Needham, two of the first women to be elected to the Royal Society. She said they taught her that "good science gets recognition regardless of the sex of the scientist". Her PhD research was supervised by

Malcolm Dixon Malcolm Dixon (18 April 1899 – 7 December 1985) was a British biochemist. Education and early life Dixon was born in Cambridge, UK to Allick Page Dixon and Caroline Dewe Dixon (née Mathews). He received his PhD in 1925, for research supervis ...

Career and research

Her first position was at the Allan Memorial Institute of Psychiatry (associated with McGill University). In 1952, she joined the staff of the

National Institute for Medical Research The National Institute for Medical Research (commonly abbreviated to NIMR), was a medical research institute based in Mill Hill, on the outskirts of north London, England. It was funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC); In 2016, the NIMR b ...

(NIMR) where she served as head of the division of Immunology from 1976 to 1988. During that time, she worked extensively with fellow immunologist

John H. Humphrey John Herbert Humphrey Order of the British Empire#Commander, CBE Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, FRCP (16 December 1915 – 25 December 1987) was a UK, British bacteriologist and immunologist. Education ...

to establish the immunology divisions. Askonas focused on

B cells B cells, also known as B lymphocytes, are a type of white blood cell of the lymphocyte subtype. They function in the humoral immunity component of the adaptive immune system. B cells produce antibody molecules which may be either secreted o ...

and determined their role in producing antibodies as part of the immune response. At the NIMR she began researching the biosynthesis of polypeptides in milk

protein Proteins are large biomolecules and macromolecules that comprise one or more long chains of amino acid residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within organisms, including catalysing metabolic reactions, DNA replication, res ...

s discovering that the

peptide Peptides (, ) are short chains of amino acids linked by peptide bonds. Long chains of amino acids are called proteins. Chains of fewer than twenty amino acids are called oligopeptides, and include dipeptides, tripeptides, and tetrapeptides. ...

s were synthesised from amino acids rapidly in one piece. From 1955-59 she studied the sites of

antibody An antibody (Ab), also known as an immunoglobulin (Ig), is a large, Y-shaped protein used by the immune system to identify and neutralize foreign objects such as pathogenic bacteria and viruses. The antibody recognizes a unique molecule of the ...

formation using radioactivity to develop our understanding of

molecules and the cells of the

immune system The immune system is a network of biological processes that protects an organism from diseases. It detects and responds to a wide variety of pathogens, from viruses to parasitic worms, as well as cancer cells and objects such as wood splint ...

. From 1959-61 she studied plasma cell tumors as models for antibody formation. She went on to investigate

macrophages Macrophages (abbreviated as M φ, MΦ or MP) ( el, large eaters, from Greek ''μακρός'' (') = large, ''φαγεῖν'' (') = to eat) are a type of white blood cell of the immune system that engulfs and digests pathogens, such as cancer ce ...

and their role in

antigen In immunology, an antigen (Ag) is a molecule or molecular structure or any foreign particulate matter or a pollen grain that can bind to a specific antibody or T-cell receptor. The presence of antigens in the body may trigger an immune respons ...

presentation (1962–1968). From 1963 to 1966 she studied the fate of

in relation to

formation and later continued her study of

from 1965 to 1970. She wrote several biographies of high-profile scientists, including

Niels Kaj Jerne Niels Kaj Jerne, FRS (23 December 1911 – 7 October 1994) was a Danish immunologist. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1984 with Georges J. F. Köhler and César Milstein "for theories concerning the specificity in dev ...

, César Milstein and John Herbert Humphrey. Askonas conducted
filmed interview
with Stanley Peart as a segment of what became the Medical Sciences Video Archive housed in the special collections of the library at Oxford Brookes University.

Awards and honours

In 2007 she was made a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences of the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

and won the

Robert Koch Prize The Robert Koch Medal and Award are two prizes awarded annually by the German for excellence in the biomedical sciences. These awards grew out of early attempts by German physician Robert Koch to generate funding to support his research into the ...

. She was also elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathemat ...

(FRS) in 1973 and a

Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci) is an award for medical scientists who are judged by the UK Academy of Medical Sciences for the "excellence of their science, their contribution to medicine and society and the range of th ...

(FMedSci).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Askonas, Brigitte 1923 births 2013 deaths Alumni of Girton College, Cambridge Austrian emigrants to the United Kingdom British immunologists Female Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of the Academy of Medical Sciences (United Kingdom) Fellows of Girton College, Cambridge Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences McGill University Faculty of Science alumni National Institute for Medical Research faculty Place of death missing 20th-century American women scientists 20th-century American scientists Fellows of the Royal Society 21st-century American women