She wrote Bacterial Metabolism (1930), which ran to three editions and was a standard textbook for generations of microbiologists. A founder of the Society for General Microbiology, she also served as its second president.[2] In 1953, the Society established the Marjory Stephenson Memorial Lecture (now the Marjory Stephenson Prize Lecture) in her memory.[2] This is the Society's principal prize, awarded biennially for an outstanding contribution of current importance in microbiology.[3]
Childhood and education
Stephenson grew up in Burwell, a village on the edge of The Fens in Cambridgeshire, between Newmarket and Cambridge. Her father Robert (1847–1929) was a farmer, surveyor and owner of a cement-manufacturing company; her mother was Sarah Rogers (1848–1925). Robert Stephenson was a prominent figure in the local community, appointed as a Justice of the Peace and then Deputy Lieutenant of Cambridgeshire; he was also a chairman of the County Council. He employed many local people in his cement works. Both of Stephenson's grandfathers, Robert Matthew Stephenson (1815–1870) and Samuel Rogers, were racehorse trainers in Newmarket, a major horse-racing centre. Samuel Rogers had been a jockey before becoming a trainer.[4]
Stephenson was the youngest of the family by nine years.[4] She was first inspired to take an interest in science by her governess Anna Jane Botwright. Stephenson later studied at the Berkhamsted School for Girls in Hertfordshire.[5]
In 1903 she went to Newnham College, Cambridge. Stephenson read Natural Sciences, taking courses in chemistry, physiology and zoology for Part I of the Natural Sciences Tripos.[4] At this time, women were still excluded from Cambridge University's chemistry and zoology laboratories; Newnham College had its own chemistry laboratory and women attended biology practicals in the Balfour Laboratory.[4]
Early career and First World war service
Stephenson originally intended to study medicine after Newnham, but her plans changed due to a lack of funds and she became a domestic science teacher, first at Gloucester County Training College and then at King's College of Household Science, London.[4] In London she shared a flat with historian Myra Curtis, who was later Principal of Newnham College. As Stephenson did not find domestic science fulfilling, she was grateful when R. H. A. Plimmer, co-founder of the Biochemical Club (later Society), invited her to become a researcher in his laboratory at University College London. Here she investigated fat metabolism, and also taught nutrition. Her studies of the intestine focused on the enzyme lactase, necessary for digestion of milk, and showed that it was inhibited by glucose but not galactose. She also worked on the consequences in metabolism of experimental diabetes and the synthesis of palmitic acid esters.[6] She was awarded a Beit Memorial Fellowship in 1913, but her work was interrupted by the First World War.[4]
After the end of the war, Stephenson returned to Cambridge to carry out research and teach in the department of biochemistry. Under the leadership of Frederick Gowland Hopkins, a group of scientists became the centre of modern biochemical studies. Here Stephenson was encouraged to move from animal metabolism and so began research on bacteria and their metabolism. This was the start of work that developed so that she became one of the UK's most eminent bacterial chemists.[6]
The department had an unusually high proportion of women amongst its researchers, at 15 per cent, but it was still very rare for a woman to be offered a University appointment. Stephenson was financed by her Beit Fellowship and later by the Medical Research Council. She was finally appointed a University lecturer in biochemistry in 1943. Meanwhile, she became an associate and later a fellow of her old College, Newnham. In 1936 the University awarded her a Doctorate of Science (DSc) degree for her research.[4]
Stephenson's main area of research was bacterial metabolism. With Margaret Whetham and Juda Quastel, she developed the washed suspension technique, which had originated with Louis Pasteur, for extracting enzymes from bacteria. With Leonard Stickland, she was the first to isolate a bacterial enzyme from the cell in 1928, when they obtained lactic dehydrogenase from Escherichia coli. In the 1930s, she continued to work with Stickland and demonstrated that a particular enzyme, formate hydrogen lyase (EC 1.17.1.9), was present in cell extracts only when the bacteria had been grown in the presence of formate. This was one of the first examples of 'adaptive enzymes,' now understood as the rapid transcriptional activation of the gene encoding the formate hydrogenlyase when the activator, formate, is added to the culture. Later in the 1930s Stephenson worked with Ernest Gale on enzyme adaptation and amino acid metabolism, and with Arthur Trim on metabolic studies of nucleic acids.
Stephenson is most widely remembered for her seminal book, Bacterial Metabolism, which ran to three editions between 1930 and 1949. Last reprinted in 1966, it was the standard work on the subject for generations of microbiologists and biochemists.[4]
Royal Society membership
In 1902 Hertha Ayrton was the first woman to be proposed as a Fellow of the Royal Society but was rejected because the society's lawyers successfully argued that it was impossible for a woman to be a Fellow. The Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 and a Privy Council ruling on the legal status of women in 1929 rendered these arguments obsolete. But, it was not until 1943 when, spurred to action by a critical article in the Daily Worker by J.B.S. Haldane (Jack Haldane), the Royal Society considered accepting women as Fellows. Charles Harington nominated Stephenson and, after a ballot in which a large majority of Fellows voted to accept women, she was duly elected in 1945 together with Kathleen Lonsdale.[4]
Second World war service and post-war research
During the Second World War, Stephenson served on the Toxin Committee.
After the war the Rockefeller Foundation and the Medical Research Council funded a new laboratory at Cambridge (known as the "Bug Hut"), to which she moved in 1947. Stephenson was also influential in improving teaching of microbial biochemistry; she helped set up a special Part II Biochemistry (Microbial) in Cambridge in the same year.[4]
Alexander Fleming, one of the founders of the Society for General Microbiology, tried to induce her to take the role of the Society's first President, but she declined; Stephenson was elected as its second president in 1947.[8]
Also in 1947 she was finally recognised by the university for her many years of service; they appointed her as the first Reader in Chemical Microbiology, a permanent position. She died of cancer on 12 December 1948, a year after the university appointment.[4]
Her biographer said of Stephenson: "She made her way in science by pioneering her own field, and her life was her work and her friends."[4] She also found time to do gardening and to travel, visiting the United States and the USSR in the 1930s.[4]
Legacy and honours
Appointed Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) and Associate Royal Red Cross (ARRC) for her service during World War I
Marjory Stephenson biennial memorial lecture established by the Society for General Microbiology in her honour in 1953[3][9]
Related Research Articles
Arthur Kornberg was an American biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1959 for the discovery of "the mechanisms in the biological synthesis of ribonucleic acid and deoxyribonucleic acid" together with Spanish biochemist and physician Severo Ochoa of New York University. He was also awarded the Paul-Lewis Award in Enzyme Chemistry from the American Chemical Society in 1951, an L.H.D. degree from Yeshiva University in 1962, and the National Medal of Science in 1979. In 1991, Kornberg received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement and the Gairdner Foundation Award in 1995.
Dorothy Mary Moyle Needham FRS was an English biochemist known for her work on the biochemistry of muscle. She was married to biochemist Joseph Needham.
Patricia Hannah Clarke FRS was a British biochemist.
The Marjory Stephenson Prize is the principal prize of the Microbiology Society, awarded for an outstanding contribution of current importance in microbiology.
Muriel Onslow was a British biochemist, born in Birmingham, England. She studied the inheritance of flower colour in the common snapdragon Antirrhinum and the biochemistry of anthocyanin pigment molecules. She attended the King Edward VI High School in Birmingham and then matriculated at Newnham College, Cambridge in 1900. At Cambridge she majored in botany. Onslow later worked within William Bateson's genetic group and then Frederick Gowland Hopkins' biochemical group in Cambridge, providing her with expertise in biochemical genetics for investigating the inheritance and biosynthesis of petal colour in Antirrhinum. She was one of the first women appointed as a lecturer at Cambridge, after moving to the Biochemistry department.
Earl Reece Stadtman NAS was an American biochemist, notable for his research on enzymes and anaerobic bacteria.
Antoinette Pirie was a British biochemist, ophthalmologist, and educator.
June Lascelles was an Australian microbiologist. She is best known for pioneering work in microbial photosynthesis.
John Raymond Postgate, FRS was an English microbiologist and writer, latterly Professor Emeritus of Microbiology at the University of Sussex. Postgate's research in microbiology investigated nitrogen fixation, microbial survival, and sulphate-reducing bacteria. He worked for the Agricultural Research Council's Unit of Nitrogen Fixation from 1963 until he retired, by then its director, in 1987. In 2011, he was described as a "father figure of British microbiology".
Mary Jane Osborn was an American biochemist and microbiologist known for her research on the biosynthesis of lipopolysaccharide, a key component of the outer membrane of Gram-negative bacteria, and discovering the mechanism of action of the anti-cancer drug methotrexate. She headed the Department of Molecular Biology and Biophysics at the University of Connecticut Health Center and served as president of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
Ida Maclean was an English biochemist and the first woman admitted to the London Chemical Society.
Audrey Jane Gibson was a British-American microbiologist and biochemist who worked in the field of photosynthetic bacteria. She discovered that selenium is required by the metabolism of coliform bacteria and described a new species of sulphur bacterium in the genus Chloroherpeton. She became a Professor at Cornell University in 1979 and was editor of the scientific journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.
Margaret Dampier Anderson was a British biochemist and scientific indexer. She published four scientific articles in the 1920s before marrying in 1927 and began indexing books beginning in 1960.
Sharon Jayne Peacock is a British microbiologist who is Professor of Public Health and Microbiology in the Department of Medicine at the University of Cambridge, and Master of Churchill College, Cambridge.
Tracy Palmer is a British microbiologist who is a professor of microbiology in the Biosciences Institute at Newcastle University in Tyne & Wear, England. She is known for her work on the twin-arginine translocation (Tat) pathway.
Renee Elizabeth Sockett is a professor and microbiologist in the School of Life Sciences at the University of Nottingham. She is a world-leading expert on Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus, a species of predatory bacteria.
Sydney Govons Kustu was an American biologist and a professor of biochemistry at University of California, Berkeley. She is known for her pioneering research on the regulation of Nitrogen metabolism in bacteria.
Frank Sargent is Professor of Microbial Biotechnology at Newcastle University, UK. He has specialised in bacterial bioenergetics, particularly protein transport and enzymes containing nickel and molybdenum, including biotechnology applications.
Laura Piddock is a microbiologist, specialising in antibiotics and antibiotic resistance in bacteria. She is Professor Emerita at the University of Birmingham, UK and also Scientific Director within the Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership.
John Rodney (Rod) Quayle FRS (1926–2006) was a microbial biochemist, West Riding Professor of Microbiology and Head of Department at University of Sheffield (1965–1983) and then Vice-Chancellor of Bath University (1983–1992). He adopted techniques for dissecting enzymic reactions using radioactive carbon-14. He focused on microbes that used compounds containing one atom of carbon as their sources of energy and biomass.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
