Marjorie Giffen MacFarlane (1904–1973) was a British physiologist and biochemist known for her research into anaerobic infection.
Life
editShe was born in Hartlepool in 1904.[1] She gained a BSc in physiology from the University of St Andrews in 1926, and then a DSc from the University of London.[2]
MacFarlane then joined the staff of the Lister Institute of Preventative Medicine. She served as secretary of the Anaerobic Wound Infections sub-committee there and was a prolific researcher and publisher of scientific articles, including discovering and characterising several toxins for the first time.[3][4][5] One of her most significant discoveries came in 1941 when, along with her colleague B.C.J.G. Knight, she isolated the toxin of Clostridium welchii and showed that it was an enzyme.[6][7] This was the first time it had been demonstrated that a toxin could attack cell membranes in this way, and opened up the possibility of developing an anti-toxin to combat this bacterium, which had been one of the main causes of gas gangrene in World War I.[8]
Along with her colleagues Harriette Chick and Margaret Hume, she published a history of the Lister Institute in 1971.[9]
She died suddenly in Hartlepool on 17 July 1973.[1]
References
edit- ^ a b Obituaries from the Times. Newspaper Archive Developments Limited. 1971. p. 326. ISBN 978-0-903713-97-9.
- ^ Who's who of British Scientists. Ohio University Press. 1964. p. 949.
- ^ Research, Committee of Privy Council for Medical; Britain), Medical Research Council (Great (1947). Medical Research in War: Report of the Medical Research Council for the Years 1939-45. H.M. Stationery Office. p. 414.
- ^ Gurr, M. I. (2012-12-06). Lipid Biochemistry: An Introduction. Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN 978-94-009-5907-1.
- ^ Alouf, Joseph E.; Ladant, Daniel; Popoff, Michel R. (2005-12-20). The Comprehensive Sourcebook of Bacterial Protein Toxins. Elsevier. p. 9. ISBN 978-0-08-045698-0.
- ^ Lax, Alistair J. (2005-10-27). Toxin: The cunning of bacterial poisons. OUP Oxford. ISBN 978-0-19-157850-2.
- ^ Cameron, Gordon Roy (1956). New Pathways in Cellular Pathology. E. Arnold. pp. 16, 71.
- ^ Hall, Kersten T. (2022). Insulin: The Crooked Timber : a History from Thick Brown Muck to Wall Street Gold. Oxford University Press. p. 166. ISBN 978-0-19-285538-1.
- ^ Chick, Harriette; Hume, Margaret; MacFarlane, Marjorie (1971). War on disease: a history of the Lister Institute. Andre Deutsch.