First Woman Professor, 1958

In 1966 (Lilian) Mary Pickford (1902-2002) became the first woman to be appointed to a Chair at Edinburgh University.

Pickford, (Lillian) Mary (1902–2002), neuroendocrinologist, was born on 14 August 1902 in Jubbulpore, India, the only daughter and elder child of Herbert Arthur Pickford (1861–1917), tea and indigo planter, and his wife, Lillian Alice Minnie, née Wintle (1873–1951). Her father was a member of the family that had founded Pickfords, the transport firm, in the seventeenth century.

Sent home to England in 1908 to live with an aunt and uncle, Mary Pickford shared a governess with her cousin before going to Hamilton House, Tunbridge Wells, in 1914, then to Wycombe Abbey School in 1916. She had decided when about eleven years old to become a doctor but her uncle, an engineer, was keenly interested in science, particularly botany, zoology, and astronomy. This gave her the idea of doing research instead. Sir Cooper Perry, then superintendent of Guy's Hospital, supported her ambition to become a doctor but dismissed the idea of a research career, saying, ‘Don't think of it. Women are no use at that kind of thing.’ This made her even more determined to enter research (Pickford, ‘Stimuli’). In 1921, after only one year of science at school, she went to Bedford College, London, to read physiology, zoology, and chemistry, graduating in 1925. Jobs for women scientists were scarce but she found part-time work teaching the history of science at University College, London; she enjoyed the Greek texts. Later she moved to the department of pharmacology to work with A. J. Clarke, then with (Ernest) Basil Verney. She still felt medicine important, however, and, thanks to a legacy worth £120 a year from a godmother, was able to study clinical medicine part-time, and was admitted MRCS and LRCP in 1933. Following a junior hospital job at Stafford General Hospital (1935–6), and some locums, she returned to academia, a decision she never regretted.

Awarded a Beit Memorial research fellowship in 1936, Pickford rejoined Verney, by then in Cambridge, to continue work on the physiology of the kidney. Her discovery (reported in the Journal of Physiology in 1939) of the antidiuretic effect of injecting acetylcholine into the brain provided a very early indication that acetylcholine could be a transmitter in the central nervous system. In 1939 she was appointed to a lectureship in the department of physiology in the Edinburgh medical school, where she remained until retiring in 1972. During the Second World War she spent her vacations acting as a locum for GPs in London, and was there during the blitz. She became reader in physiology in 1952, and was the first woman in the medical faculty to hold a chair when appointed professor in 1966. She was a dedicated teacher and meticulous experimentalist. Her research, centred on the neuroendocrine action of the hypothalamus and posterior pituitary gland, made important contributions to renal and reproductive physiology. Studies in the early 1950s on the relationship between the release of the antidiuretic hormone (ADH, also termed vasopressin) and oxytocin helped to establish that, though often released by the same stimuli, they were separate hormones with different roles, ADH working in the kidney and oxytocin in the uterus and mammary gland. Later she investigated how oestrogen influenced the effect of oxytocin and vasopressin on blood vessels. Most of her investigations were done on conscious dogs that she had surgically prepared under anaesthesia. Her concern for their welfare was paramount: such was the rapport she established with her animals that when a dog was taken off for an experiment those left behind would bark in complaint. Sometimes she used herself as a subject: she inadvertently confirmed the antidiuretic effect of emotional upset when she spilt her month's sugar ration on the floor while making measurements (and jam) at home one wartime Sunday.

In addition to her many papers in scientific journals, Pickford published a popular paperback, The Central Role of Hormones, in 1969. Following her retirement in 1972 she moved to Derbyshire (though she returned to Edinburgh some ten years later). From 1973 to 1983 she held a special professorship of endocrinology at Nottingham University, working three days a week. In 1977 she spent six months in Brisbane as a visiting professor. She was elected FRSE in 1954, FRS in 1966, and a fellow of University College, London, in 1968. Among other distinctions, she was an honorary member of the Physiological Society and an honorary fellow of the Pharmacological Society (of which, in 1935, she had been the first female member).

Pickford was well built, with a charming smile and a very definite presence. One of many congress participants sailing to Boston on the SS Minnekahda in 1929, she was described as ‘the undisputed belle of British lady physiologists’ (Zotterman). Not a shy person, she later inveigled totally unmusical colleagues to sing with her in wartime concerts for the troops. While kind and encouraging to the young, she was intolerant of sloppy arguments from peers. Apart from research she had many interests, among them medical education, the welfare of students (particularly women), theology (she was for many years a member of St John's episcopal church in Princes Street, Edinburgh), music, writing poetry, and gardening. She was an accomplished painter and founded the Edinburgh Women Artists group; as well as selling her pictures she made and sold silver jewellery. Her last six years were spent at Winton Nursing Home, Nether Wallop, near Stockbridge, Hampshire. She died there of heart failure on her hundredth birthday, 14 August 2002, and was buried at King Sterndale, Derbyshire.

Ann Silver Sources

Y. Zotterman, ‘The Minnekahda voyage’, History of the International Congresses of Physiological Sciences, 1889–1968, ed. W. O. Fenn [1968], 3–14 · M. Pickford, ‘Stimuli that release hormones of the pars nervosa’, Pioneers in neuroendocrinology, ed. J. Meites, B. T. Donovan, and S. M. McCann (1975), 205–16 · M. Pickford, Wycombe Abbey Gazette (1988) · M. Phillips, ‘Mary Pickford F. R. S.’, Women physiologists: an anniversary celebration of their contributions to British physiology, ed. L. Bindman, A. Brading, and T. Tansey (1993), 41–7 · Daily Telegraph (23 Aug 2002) · The Independent (23 Aug 2002) · The Guardian (27 Aug 2002) · BPS Bulletin (winter 2002) · WW (2002) · personal knowledge (2006) · private information (2006) [Jessica Bailey, niece] · d. cert. Likenesses

photograph, 1929, repro. in Fenn, ed., History of the International Congresses of Physiological Sciences · group portrait, photograph, 1954, repro. in Bindman, Brading, and Tansey, eds., Women physiologists · Godfrey Argent Studio, photograph, 1966?, Laboratory of Neuroendocrinology, Edinburgh Wealth at death

£590,887: probate, 19 Dec 2002, CGPLA Eng. & Wales © Oxford University Press 2004–14 All rights reserved: see legal notice Oxford University Press

Ann Silver, ‘Pickford, (Lillian) Mary (1902–2002)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Jan 2006; online edn, Oct 2008 accessed 28 Aug 2014

(Lillian) Mary Pickford (1902–2002): doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/77182