Una Lucy Fielding

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Una Lucy Fielding

Una Lucy Fielding (born May 20, 1888 in Wellington , New South Wales , Australia , † August 11, 1969 in St Pancras , United Kingdom) was an Australian neuroanatomist.

Life

Fielding's father, Sydney Glanville Fielding, was an Anglican clergyman and writer. Mother Lucy Frances, b. Johnson, raised her six children. In 1893 Fielding started attending a private school and from 1900 she attended St Catherine's Clergy Daughters' School in Waverley . After finishing school, she won a scholarship to Sydney University in 1907 . There she studied art and graduated in 1910 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. For 6 years she then taught French and English as a governess at Kelvin College, (Neutral Bay) and in Ravenswood (Gordon).

Medical work

Fielding's real desire, however, was to study medicine. So she returned to the University of Sydney and completed her medical studies with a Bachelor of Science (BSc) in 1919. In 1922 she obtained a Bachelor of Medicine (MB) and a Master of Surgery (ChM).

In July 1923 she traveled to England. There she worked, initially undoped, as a demonstrator in the Department of Anatomy at University College London (UCL) until 1927 . In the local laboratories they learned basic techniques and skills in neurosurgery histology . She represented this subject with great competence and was soon known and in demand because of her encyclopedic knowledge and extensive experience in many histological techniques.

In 1927 she went to the USA. There she was for a long time a neuroanatomical demonstrator at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor . From 1928 to 1929 she was appointed to the American University of Beirut (Syria) as an "acting professor" for histology and neurology .

After returning to England, she taught neurological anatomy at University College London from 1928 and was appointed reader of the respected neuroanatomy from 1935–1937 . In addition to her research work, she taught medical students who were in the clinical part of their training and supervised postgraduates . She also taught anatomy and physiology of the nervous system for psychology students and clinical anthropology for students of archeology and Egyptology .

Una Fielding hoped to be scientifically successful in publishing a book on comparative neuroanatomy. To do this, she had created a large collection of detailed drawings and notes. But the beginning of the Second World War prevented her plan as she, as acting head of neuroanatomy at UCL, had to organize the evacuation of all medical students and staff from London. In the aftermath of a bomb attack, she lost all drawings and notes on her book project.

After the end of the war in April 1947 she became assistant professor of anatomy at the newly founded Farouk 1st University in Alexandria , Egypt. As part of the political reorientation of the Egyptian government, which opposed the staying of expatriates , she was expelled in 1951 and left Egypt in February 1952. In the process, she once again lost all records of her most recent scientific research.

Back in London she took over teaching at the medical schools of the University of London (UCL), although she is now more than 60 years old. First at St. Mary's Hospital and later at St. Thomas's Hospital. There she reorganized the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, inventoried and cataloged the extensive collection of neuroanatomical specimens and drawings begun in 1902.

As a member of the British Federation of University Women , she lived the rest of her life at Crosby Hall until she died on August 11, 1969 at St. Pancras Hospital at the age of 81.

Scientific importance

Since 1923 a member of the Anatomical Society of Great Britain and Ireland , she published from 1925 in the communications of the Anatomical Society (e.g. on the brain of the pouch mole ( Notoryctes )). Scientifically successful, she was able to bring her fundamental knowledge of the production of histological specimens and her profound knowledge into the research that she carried out at the UCL, encouraged by Grafton Elliot Smith (UCL), together with Prof. Grigore T. Popa . When interpreting the histological serial sections carried out on the brain of pouches, she first clarified the vascular architecture of the pituitary and hypothalamus . Both Popa and Fielding were the first to describe a venous connection between the anterior pituitary and the hypothalamus, the pituitary portal vein . They saw more than a dozen veins extend from the tuberosity of the pituitary gland into the funnel lobe and from there into the tuber cinereum of the hypothalamus. Popa and Fielding interpret the flow direction as a centripetal one, running from the anterior pituitary to the hypothalamus.

Her fundamental research results were published in various medical journals between 1930 and 1933. They revitalized the hypothalamus and pituitary research of the time, as Popa and Fielding were the first to demonstrate the vascular connection between pituitary and hypothalamus anatomically and histologically and thus the conception of a hypothalamus-pituitary-gonadal axis could take shape.

Publications

  • GT Popa, U. Fielding: Hypophysio-Portal Vessels and their Colloid Accompaniment. In: Journal of anatomy. Volume 67, January 1933, pp. 227-232, PMID 17104419 , PMC 1249341 (free full text).
  • GT Popa, U. Fielding: The vascular link between the pituitary and the hypothalamus. In: The Lancet . 1930; 216 (5579), pp. 238-240.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.ucl.ac.uk/cdb/about/history/history Anatomy and Anthropology at UCL
  2. ^ GT Popa, U. Fielding: The vascular link between the pituitary and the hypothalamus. In: The Lancet. 1930; 216 (5579), pp. 238-240.
  3. ^ GT Popa, U. Fielding: Hypophysio-portal vessels and their colloid accompaniment. In: J Anat. 1933; 67, p. 2273.
personal data
SURNAME Fielding, Una Lucy
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Australian neuroanatomist
DATE OF BIRTH May 20, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Wellington , New South Wales, Australia
DATE OF DEATH 11th August 1969
Place of death St Pancras , United Kingdom