TOP 100 SCIENCE SITES
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| Were rats behind Easter Island mystery? Easter Island's mystery -- brooding statues atop a treeless Polynesian island -- fascinates tourists and scholars alike. rssfeeds.usatoday.com |
Study: Slowdown in warming last year not permanent WASHINGTON (AP) -- Climate researchers say cooler temperatures in North America last year do not mean global warming is easing.... hosted.ap.org |
The UK rocks British Geological Survey opens up its image archive news.bbc.co.uk |
Yemeni forces storm al-Qaida hide-out, arrest 1 SAN'A, Yemen (AP) -- Yemeni security forces stormed an al-Qaida hide-out Wednesday in a principle militant stronghold in the country's west, setting off clashes, officials said, as a security chief vowed to fight the group's powerful local branch until it was eliminated.... hosted.ap.org |
Mary English obituary Medical mycologist and writer of an award-winning book on MRSAMary English, who has died aged 90, was one of the leading medical mycologists of her time. Her pioneering work in establishing one of the first and most important medical mycology laboratories in Britain and her own studies of fungal infections earned her a considerable reputation. After her retirement in 1980 she embarked on a second career as a writer of scientific and social history, with notable biographies of the eminent Victorian naturalists Dr Edwin Lankester and Mordecai Cubitt Cooke, a founder of the British Mycological Society, who was also one of her forebears.Her final book, written with Professor Graham Ayliffe, was Hospital Infection: From Miasmas to MRSA (2003), a wide-ranging survey of the long history of hospital-acquired infections and the battle against them. It proved timely when the spread of "superbugs" was posing problems on a worldwide scale. Its contribution to this important subject was recognised in 2004 by the Society of Authors and Royal Society of Medicine award for the best new medical history book.English is best remembered in medical mycology for her groundbreaking research into the epidemiology of Tinea pedis, or athlete's foot. In a specialised field, she was one of the few workers who occupied a unique interface between botanical and agricultural science on the one hand, and medicine and infectious diseases on the other. In her work on human ringworms originating in animals, she showed that Trichophyton erinacei, newly described in New Zealand (where she spent many a night chasing hedgehogs by torchlight), was common among British hedgehogs, from which it could spread to dogs and their owners. She also established that another fungus, Microsporum persicolor, hitherto known only from human scalp infections, was native to the short-tailed field vole and wood mouse.It was her appointment as head of a new unit specialising in fungal diseases in humans at the United Bristol hospitals in 1954 that gave Mary the rare opportunity to enter medical mycology. The small spore that she sowed in that year grew, in her own words, to become "a very large mushroom", for Bristol is now the home of the Health Protection Agency's Mycology Reference Laboratory. It was an achievement in which force of character was to play a part alongside scientific excellence.As a highly specialised scientist attempting to set up a new facility in the hierarchical hospital environment, Mary faced opposition and misunderstanding. Determined that medical mycologists should be accorded the same status as specialist experts in fungi in non-medical fields, she doggedly persisted in using the dining and common rooms set aside for the (all male) medical consultants. When eventually persuaded to obtain a DSc in 1970, she did so, she declared, to ensure that her medical colleagues would have to "stop treating me like a laboratory technician". She was soon invited to join the hospital medical committee of the United Bristol hospitals and granted the title of consultant mycologist, a singular honour for a clinical scientist at that time.Mary was born in Malaya (now Malaysia), where her father was a pioneer rubber planter. At the age of seven, she sailed to England, where she and her younger sister Susan were sent to a "home school" in the New Forest. After completing her schooling at St Stephen's college, Folkestone, she spent a year at the Regent Street Polytechnic in London before gaining a place to read botany at King's College, London in 1937. Since "women didn't do science in those days", she was always grateful to her parents for making this possible.After graduating with honours in 1941, she was directed to work as an agricultural chemist for the War Agricultural Advisory Centre in Bristol, while also studying in her spare time for an MSc in mycology from the University of London. By the time she obtained this in 1943 she knew that she wanted to make a career in mycology, and managed to get a job as a plant pathologist at East Malling research station in Kent. In 1946 she joined a firm making science films in London, before becoming a fellow in mycology at the University of Birmingham."My career was shaped by the war," Mary observed towards the end of her life. "The war meant it became acceptable for women to take scientific jobs." It also played an important part in shaping her socialist beliefs. During wartime evacuation to Bristol, where she carried out fire-watching duties with her fellow King's students, she witnessed scenes of social deprivation that made a profound impression. She welcomed the election of the Attlee government in 1945, and was an impassioned supporter of the National Health Service. Many a resident of her beloved city of Bristol will have become familiar with the "Save our NHS" poster that adorned the front window of her flat throughout the Thatcher and Blair years.Mary was a lifelong member of the British Society for Medical Mycology and the British Mycological Society, whose autumn "Fungus Forays" she attended faithfully – not, she claimed, in order to collect mushrooms and toadstools, but rather to collect mycologists. A kind and valued mentor to generations of colleagues, Mary shared her passions and principles with a wide circle of friends. My parents, friends of hers from student days, were not alone in asking her to be godmother to one of their children. A caring and attentive family member, she is survived by her brother Marcus, three nephews, four great-nephews and a great-niece whose antics delighted her later years, and a recently born fifth great-nephew.• Mary Phyllis English, medical mycologist, born 10 April 1919; died 11 October 2009MRSA and superbugsMedical researchNHSguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |