Record

Authorised form of name	Lyon; Mary Frances (1925 - 2014); geneticist
Dates	1925 - 2014
Nationality	British
Place of birth	Maternity Home, 3 Aspland Road, Norwich, England
Date of birth	15 May 1925
Place of death	Her home, Crabtree Cottage, Crabtree Lane, Drayton, Oxfordshire, England
Date of death	25 December 2014
DatesAndPlaces	Cremated in Oxford, England (16 January 2015).
Occupation	Geneticist
Research field	Biology
Research field	Genetics
Activity	Education; Primary school in Bradford and Norwich; King Edward VI High School, Birmingham (1936); Woking Grammar School for Girls (1939); Girton College, Cambridge (titular degree 1946); PhD (1950) Career: Awarded a Medical Research Council (MRC) grant to work in the team led by Toby Carter, studying the genetic effects of radiation in mice (1950); team relocated to MRC Radiology Unit at Harwell, Oxfordshire (1955); Head of the Genetics Section of the MRC Radiology Unit at Harwell (1962-1987); Clothworkers' visiting research fellowship at Girton College, working with Richard Gardner (1970-1971); retired but remained active in the laboratory (1990); died at home from bronchopneumonia and Parkinson’s disease. Awards/Medals: William Allan Award (1986) Wolf Prize in Medicine (1997)
Membership category	Fellow
Date of election	15/03/1973
Age at election	47
RSActivity	Medals and prizes: Royal Medal 1984
Relationships	Parents: Clifford James Lyon (1896–1963), tax office clerk, and Louise Frances, née Kirby (1893–1986).
OtherInfo	Distinguished for many important contributions to mammalian genetics, notably on the mutagenic effects of irradiation as measured in mice, and on the building of the hypothesis that one of the two X chromosomes of the female is inactivated at an early stage of embryogenesis. The hypothesis, which is now almost universally accepted as proved, offered a solution to the long standing problem of X-dosage compensation in the female mammal, has thrown much light on the nature of sex-chromosome aneuploidy, has influenced ideas on the origin of certain tumours and of chronic granulocytic leukaemia in man, and has provided food for thought about the fundamental mechanism of switching off genes.
Royal Society Obituary or Memoir	Click to view (may be contained within a meeting notice, presidential address or list of death notices)
Image
Virtual International Authority File	http://viaf.org/viaf/27731364
Code	NA165

Archives associated with this Fellow

RefNo	Title	Date
IM/002838	Lyon, Mary Frances	March 1984
EC/1973/19	Lyon, Mary Frances: certificate of election to the Royal Society
IM/GA/GRS/6218	Lyon, Mary Frances	nd

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