Sybil Cooper (January 1900 – 1970), was a British

physiologist Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a sub-discipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out the chemical a ...

Life and work

Sybil Cooper, daughter of the distinguished architect Sir Edwin Cooper, was born in London, England, in January 1900. She attended Girton College, Cambridge and took the

Natural Sciences Tripos The Natural Sciences Tripos (NST) is the framework within which most of the science at the University of Cambridge is taught. The tripos includes a wide range of Natural Sciences from physics, astronomy, and geoscience, to chemistry and biology, w ...

in 1922. She became a research assistant upon graduation to Edgar Adrian, studying nerve and muscle physiology, before receiving her Ph.D in 1927. Cooper then became a research student and then a research fellow at

St Hilda's College, Oxford St Hilda's College is one of the Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. The college is named after the Anglo-Saxon Saint, Hilda of Whitby and was founded in 1893 as a hall for women; it ...

with the physiologist

Charles Scott Sherrington Sir Charles Scott Sherrington (27 November 1857 – 4 March 1952) was an eminent English neurophysiologist. His experimental research established many aspects of contemporary neuroscience, including the concept of the spinal reflex as a system ...

while working as a demonstrator in anatomy for the University of Oxford. During this time, she married R. S. Creed in 1933; he was a demonstrator in physiology. She resigned her position in 1934 and had the first of her four children the following year. Able to afford household help, she took an unpaid position as a lecturer in natural science at St. Hilda's in 1940 and received a paid position as a research fellow there in 1946 that she maintained until her retirement in 1968. She was killed in an automobile accident in 1970.Ogilvie & Harvey, pp. 592–93 She collaborated with her husband on muscle reflexes before and after the birth of her children. "Demonstrating great ability in dissecting minute sense organs with intact nerves, she recorded nerve activity. As an excellent histologist, Cooper fixed, stained, and examined the microstructure of the sense organs. Alone and with colleagues, she made advances in understanding how the muscle spindles functioned relative to their structure."Ogilvie & Harvey, p. 593

Notes

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Cooper, Sybil 1900 births 1970 deaths Alumni of Girton College, Cambridge British physiologists Women physiologists Scientists from London Alumni of St Hilda's College, Oxford Fellows of St Hilda's College, Oxford