| Authorised form of name | Pickford; Lillian Mary (1902 - 2002); neuroendocrinologist |
| Dates | 1902 - 2002 |
| Nationality | British |
| Place of birth | Jubbulpore, Madhya Pradesh, India, Asia |
| Date of birth | 14 August 1902 |
| Place of death | Winton Nursing Home, Nether Wallop, near Stockbridge, Hampshire, England |
| Date of death | 14 August 2002 |
| DatesAndPlaces | Burial: King Sterndale, Derbyshire, England |
| Occupation | Neuroendocrinologist |
| Research field | Physiology |
| Endocrinology |
| Activity | Education:
Early education via governess (1908); Hamilton House, Tunbridge Wells (1914); Wycombe Abbey School (1916); Bedford College, London (physiology, zoology, and chemistry) (1925)
Career:
Part-time teacher of history of science at University College, London (c. 1926); joined the Department of Pharmacology, where she worked with Ernest Basil Verney (FRS 1936) and Alfred Joseph Clark (FRS 1931); left University College, London, to pursue medical studies (1930s); returned to academia and was awarded the Beit Memorial Research Rellowship (1936); worked on the physiology of the kidney with Ernest Basil Verney at Cambridge University; spent university vacations working as a locum doctor in London and assisted patrol air-raid shelters and provided medical help (1939-1945); appointed lecturer in physiology at the Department of Physiology, Edinburgh medical school (1939-1972); retired (1972); held a special professorship of endoctrinology at Nottinghamshire University (1973-1983); moved to Derbyshire, later returning to Edinburgh; died of heart failure.
Memberships:
MRCS
LRCP
Pharmacological Society
FRSE
Physiological Society
Fellow of University College, London |
| Membership category | Fellow |
| Date of election | 17/03/1966 |
| Age at election | 63 |
| Proposer | Arthur St George Joseph McCarthy Huggett |
| Ivan de Burgh Daly |
| Ernest Basil Verney |
| Alan Nigel Drury |
| Wilhelm Siegmund Feldberg |
| Edith Bülbring |
| Relationships | Parents: Herbert Arthur Pickford (1861–1917), tea and indigo planter, and Lillian Alice Minnie, née Wintle (1873–1951). |
| PublishedWorks | RCN 20124
RCN R77415 |
| OtherInfo | Distinguished for contributions on the release of antidiuretic hormone (ADH) of the posterior pituitary gland and its modifications by water load and by activity of the anterior lobe of the pituitary. Established that ADH is released by the action of acetylcholine, a central action which probably occurs normally, and that the release of ADH and oxytocin always occurs simultaneously.
Demonstrated that changes in the response of vascular and uterine smooth muscle to oxytocin occur both during oestrus and after blocking of sympathetic nervous activity.
First woman to be elected to the Pharmacological Society in 1935.
Second woman (after Elizabeth Wiskemann (1899-1971)) to be appointed to a medical professorship at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, having been awarded a personal chair in Physiology.
She took a keen interested in the welfare of women students at Edinburgh University.
As an accomplished painter, she founded the Edinburgh Women Artists group. |
| Royal Society Obituary or Memoir | Click to view (may be contained within a meeting notice, presidential address or list of death notices) |
| Related images | Discover a selection of related images in our picture library |
| Image | 
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| Source | DNB
Alan W Cuthbert ' A brief history of the British Pharmacological Soviety' , BJP [British Pharmacological Sciety] Volume 147 ((S1), January 2006 |
| Code | NA3988 |