Julia Bell

Julia Bell (born January 28, 1879 in Sherwood , Nottinghamshire , † April 26, 1979 in Westminster ) was a British mathematician , doctor and human geneticist and co-discoverer of the Martin Bell Syndrome (Fragile X Syndrome) named after her .

Life

Bell was born in Central England in 1879, the tenth of fourteen children. Her mother, Katharine, came from the English upper class, but had "improperly" married a friend of a servant who became a successful businessman and placed value on the education of all children. In 1898 she passed the entrance examination to the first women's college, Girton College at Cambridge University , where she studied mathematics. Due to male protests, however, no diploma could be issued until 1948, so that, like many female students of that time (as a so-called steamboat lady ), she had to move to Dublin at Trinity College , where she received her diploma, which was then also recognized in Cambridge. She then did her PhD in Cambridge.

From 1914 she worked for Karl Pearson , one of the co-founders of modern statistics, at the Galton Laboratory at University College London , who suggested that she also study medicine. She graduated from the London School of Medicine for Women ( Royal Free Hospital ) and St. Mary's Hospital in 1922 and became a member of the Royal College of Physicians in 1926 .

Her work at the Galton Laboratory, where she documented familial diseases ( Treasury of Human Inheritance ), is considered to be the first systematic long-term documentation of human hereditary diseases. Together with John Burdon Sanderson Haldane (1892–1964) she published an article in 1937 on the genetic link between hemophilia and red-green poor eyesight . A gene linkage was previously only known in animals, but not in humans. An important article on consumption rates (inbreeding) followed in 1940 . With J. Purdon Martin , she first described Fragile X Syndrome , also known as Martin Bell Syndrome , in 1943 . Another seminal article appeared in 1959 on rubella in pregnancy and the resulting serious rubella embryopathy . Five forms of brachydactyly are named after her.

It was not until the age of 86 that she retired in 1965 and had survived three professors at the Galton Laboratory. Even after that, she followed the work of her colleagues critically and enthusiastically. Only when she was 96 did she go to a retirement home, where she died when she was 100. She wasn't married and had no children.

Publications

• J. Bell, JBS Haldane: The linkage between the genes for color-blindness and haemophilia in man. In: Proc. Roy. Soc. London. Volume 123B, 1937, pp. 119-150.
• JP Martin, J. Bell: A pedigree of mental defect showing sex-linkage. In: J. Neurol. Psychiatry. Volume 6, 1943, pp. 154-157.

literature

• G. Jones: Julia Bell. In: H. Matthew, B. Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 4.
• Sabine Schuchert: Julia Bell, the argumentative, clever "Streamboat Lady". In: Deutsches Ärzteblatt . Volume 115, Issue 46, November 16, 2018, p. 64.