Dame Janet Maria Vaughan, Mrs Gourlay (18 October 1899 – 9 January 1993), 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 ...

, academic, and

academic administrator Academic administration is a branch of university or college employees responsible for the maintenance and supervision of the institution and separate from the Faculty (academic staff), faculty or academics, although some personnel may have joint ...

.Evelyn Irons
Obituary: Dame Janet Vaughan
''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

'', 12 January 1993. She researched in

haematology Hematology ( always spelled haematology in British English) is the branch of medicine concerned with the study of the cause, prognosis, treatment, and prevention of diseases related to blood. It involves treating diseases that affect the produc ...

and radiation pathology. From 1945 to 1967, she served as Principal of

Somerville College, Oxford Somerville College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England, was founded in 1879 as Somerville Hall, one of its first two women's colleges. Among its alumnae have been Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Dorothy Hodgkin, Ir ...

Early life

Born in

Clifton Clifton may refer to: People *Clifton (surname) *Clifton (given name) Places Australia * Clifton, Queensland, a town **Shire of Clifton *Clifton, New South Wales, a suburb of Wollongong *Clifton, Western Australia Canada *Clifton, Nova Scotia ...

, Bristol, she was the eldest of four children of

William Wyamar Vaughan William Wyamar Vaughan (25 February 1865 - 4 February 1938) was a British educationalist. Vaughan was the son of Sir Henry Halford Vaughan, Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford. His mother Adeline Maria Jackson was Julia Stephen's older si ...

(a maternal first cousin of

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born i ...

and later headmaster of

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) and Margaret "Madge" Symonds, daughter of

John Addington Symonds John Addington Symonds, Jr. (; 5 October 1840 – 19 April 1893) was an English poet and literary critic. A cultural historian, he was known for his work on the Renaissance, as well as numerous biographies of writers and artists. Although m ...

. At the time of her birth he was an assistant master at

Clifton College ''The spirit nourishes within'' , established = 160 years ago , closed = , type = Public schoolIndependent boarding and day school , religion = Christian , president = , head_label = Head of College , head ...

. She was educated at home, and later at

North Foreland Lodge (To do good and be happy) , established = 1909 , closed = 2003 , type = Independent , religious_affiliation = Church of England , president = , head_label = , head = , r_head_label = , r_head ...

and

Somerville College Somerville College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England, was founded in 1879 as Somerville Hall, one of its first two women's colleges. Among its alumnae have been Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Dorothy Hodgkin, Ir ...

, Oxford, where she studied medicine under

Charles 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 ...

and

J. B. S. Haldane John Burdon Sanderson Haldane (; 5 November 18921 December 1964), nicknamed "Jack" or "JBS", was a British-Indian scientist who worked in physiology, genetics, evolutionary biology, and mathematics. With innovative use of statistics in biolog ...

. She did her clinical training at

University College Hospital University College Hospital (UCH) is a teaching hospital in the Fitzrovia area of the London Borough of Camden, England. The hospital, which was founded as the North London Hospital in 1834, is closely associated with University College London ...

, London, where she worked in London's slums and saw firsthand the effects of poverty on health. Later she received a scholarship from the

Rockefeller Foundation The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The second-oldest major philanthropic institution in America, after the Carneg ...

to study at Harvard University.

Career

As a woman doctor, Vaughan had difficulties gaining access to patients and experimented on pigeons. Woolf described her as "an attractive woman; competent, disinterested, taking blood tests all day to solve abstract problems". In 1932, Vaughan and her co-driver and fellow medic Dr.

Frances Charlotte Naish Frances Charlotte Naish (17 January 1908 - 24 March 1959) was a British General practitioner who pioneered aspects of infant health research. Biography Naish was born in Sheffield. Her parents were both medics: her mother Dr. Lucy Naish was a l ...

won the Ladies' Cup at the

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. They won the race in spite of losing an hour’s time when they stopped to attend to the victims of a road accident. As a young pathologist at the

Royal Postgraduate Medical School The Royal Postgraduate Medical School (RPMS) was an independent medical school, based primarily at Hammersmith Hospital in west London. In 1988, the school merged with the Institute of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, and in 1997 became part of Imperial ...

Hammersmith Hospital Hammersmith Hospital, formerly the Military Orthopaedic Hospital, and later the Special Surgical Hospital, is a major teaching hospital in White City, West London. It is part of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust in the London Borough of H ...

in 1938 she initiated creation of national blood banks in London, setting one up with Federico Duran-Jorda. The modified milk bottle for blood collection and storage was named " MRC bottle" or "Janet Vaughan". In 1945, she was sent to Belgium by the Medical Research Council to research starvation, and then into Germany; at war's end she was working in the

Bergen-Belsen concentration camp Bergen-Belsen , or Belsen, was a Nazi concentration camp in what is today Lower Saxony in northern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle. Originally established as a prisoner of war camp, in 1943, parts of it became a concent ...

and significantly improved the strategy to feed people suffering from extreme starvation. Vaughan's research included blood disease, blood transfusion, the treatment of starvation, and the effect of radioactivity on the bone and bone marrow. Her 1934 book, ''The Anaemias'', was one of the first specialised treatments of blood diseases. After the war, she became known for her work on the effects of

plutonium Plutonium is a radioactive chemical element with the symbol Pu and atomic number 94. It is an actinide metal of silvery-gray appearance that tarnishes when exposed to air, and forms a dull coating when oxidized. The element normally exhibi ...

. From 1945 until her retirement in 1967, while working as a researcher at the

Churchill Hospital The Churchill Hospital is a teaching hospital in Oxford, England. It is managed by the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. History The original hospital on the site was built in 1940 with the intention of providing medical aid to ...

, she was Principal of Somerville College. She was Principal while Shirley Catlin (later

Shirley Williams, Baroness Williams of Crosby Shirley Vivian Teresa Brittain Williams, Baroness Williams of Crosby, (' Catlin; 27 July 1930 – 12 April 2021) was a British politician and academic. Originally a Labour Party Member of Parliament (MP), she served in the Labour cabinet from ...

) and Margaret Roberts (who would later become the British Prime Minister

Margaret Thatcher Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. S ...

) studied there. She also served on the

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, as a founder trustee of the

Nuffield Foundation The Nuffield Foundation is a charitable trust established in 1943 by William Morris, Lord Nuffield, the founder of Morris Motors Ltd. It aims to improve social well-being by funding research and innovation projects in education and social pol ...

, and for one year as chairman of the Oxford Regional Hospital Board.

Honours

Vaughan was appointed

Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

(DBE) in the 1957

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. Oxford University awarded her an honorary DCL in 1967. She was 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 science, natural knowledge, incl ...

(FRS) in 1979.

Publications

* Vaughan, Janet. ''The Anemias''. London: Oxford University Press, 1934. * Vaughan, Janet. "Leuco-erythoblastic Anemias", ''Journal of Pathology and Bacteriology'' 17 (1936):541-64. * Vaughan, Janet. "Conditions at Belsen Concentration Camp", ''British Medical Journal'', Physiology and treatment of starvation ser. (1945):819 * Vaughan, Janet. ''The Physiology of Bone''. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969. * Vaughan, Janet. ''The Effect of Irradiation of the Skeleton''. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973.

Personal life

She married David Gourlay, of the Wayfarers' Travel Agency, in 1930. They had two daughters: Mary (1932) and Frances (1935).“Gourlay Mary A / Vaughan” in Register of Births for Paddington RD, vol. 1a (1932), p. 19; “Gourlay Frances P / Vaughan” in Register of Births for Marylebone RD, vol. 1a (1935), p. 605

References

External links

Royal College of Physicians profile of Dame Janet Vaughan
contains a detailed account of her life, based in part on her 1993 ''Independent'' obituary

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...

Longreads article on Janet Vaughan by Rose George : A very naughty little girl : The extraordinary life of Janet Vaughan, who changed our relationship with blood
{{DEFAULTSORT:Vaughan, Janet 1899 births 1993 deaths Alumni of Somerville College, Oxford British physiologists Women physiologists Dames Commander of the Order of the British Empire Female Fellows of the Royal Society People educated at North Foreland Lodge Medical doctors from Bristol Place of death missing Principals of Somerville College, Oxford Radiobiologists Women radiobiologists Fellows of the Royal Society 20th-century British women scientists