{{Short description|English physiologist (1868 – 1953)}} thumb|Mary Tebb studied substances including protagon, reticulin (pictured), cholesterol, and spermine '''Mary Christine Rosenheim''' (''née'' '''Tebb''', 1868 – 1953) was an English physiologist. She is particularly known for her work with Otto Rosenheim on the crystalline material protagon.
== Early life == Mary was the daughter of businessman and activist William Tebb and his wife Mary, ''née'' Scott. Her brother William was a medical doctor and her sister Florence was a mathematician who, like Mary, studied at Girton. Mary was educated at Bedford College, London, from 1882 to 1887.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last1=Ogilvie |first1=Marilyn Bailey |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LTSYePZvSXYC&pg=PA1272 |title=The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science: L-Z |last2=Harvey |first2=Joy Dorothy |date=2000 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=978-0-415-92040-7 |pages=1272 |language=en}}</ref>
== Career == At Girton College, Cambridge, Mary studied natural sciences between 1887 and 1893, where she gained a double first and specialised in physiology in Part II. She held a Bathurst studentship and was assistant to Marion Greenwood (later Marion Bidder), leader of the Balfour Biological Laboratory for Women, between 1891 and 1893.<ref name=":0" /><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Creese |first=Mary R. S. |date=1991 |title=British Women of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries Who Contributed to Research in the Chemical Sciences |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4027231 |journal=The British Journal for the History of Science |volume=24 |issue=3 |pages=275–305 |doi=10.1017/S0007087400027370 |jstor=4027231 |pmid=11622943 |issn=0007-0874}}</ref>
She then moved to King's College, London, where she worked at William Dobinson Halliburton's Chemical Physiology Laboratory until 1910, and at the Physiology Laboratory from 1910 to 1916.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1">Creese (1998), p. 281.</ref>
During this time, she published papers on enzymatic hydrolysis of complex carbohydrates and on the structure of protein fibres in connective tissue. This brought her into a controversy about the nature of reticulin which was not resolved until much later.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Srinivasan |first1=Parithychery R. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eARSAQAAIAAJ&q=origins+of+biochemistry+retrospect |title=The Origins of Modern Biochemistry: A Retrospect on Proteins |last2=Fruton |first2=Joseph Stewart |last3=Edsall |first3=John Tileston |date=1979 |publisher=New York Academy of Sciences |isbn=978-0-89766-018-1 |pages=54–5 |language=en}}</ref>
Between 1907 and 1910, she collaborated with King's College's lecturer in physiological chemistry, Otto Rosenheim, a German chemist who had emigrated to England in 1894 to escape antisemitism.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=King |first=H. |date=1956 |title=Sigmund Otto Rosenheim. 1871-1955 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/769489 |journal=Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society |volume=2 |pages=257–267 |jstor=769489 |issn=0080-4606}}</ref> They studied protagon, a crystalline material produced by the brain, and established that it was a mixture rather than a chemical compound.<ref name=":1" /> In the words of an obituarist, 'They laid the bogy of protagon, around which unseemly controversy had raged.'<ref>{{Cite journal |last=King |first=Harold |date=1955 |title=Obituaries |url=https://www.nature.com/articles/1751019a0.pdf |journal=Nature |volume=175 |issue=4467 |pages=1019–1020|doi=10.1038/1751019a0 }}</ref> Tebb and Rosenheim married in July 1910.<ref>King (1956), p. 257.</ref>
Mary received grants from the Royal Society to study cholesterol until 1916.<ref name=":2">Creese (1998), p. 282.</ref> thumb|Spermine In 1923, she worked at the Medical Research Council in Hampstead along with Rosenheim.<ref name=":2" /> They studied spermine, having established the conditions for the reproduction of spermine phosphate crystals while at King's College.<ref>King (1956), p. 259.</ref>
She died in 1953, being nursed by her husband for the last two years of her life.<ref>King (1956), p. 263.</ref>
== Select publications == * 'Reticulin and Collagen,' ''Journal of Physiology'' 27:6 (1902), 463-472<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Tebb |first=M. Christine |date=1902-01-31 |title=Reticulin and collagen |journal=The Journal of Physiology |volume=27 |issue=6 |pages=463–472 |doi=10.1113/jphysiol.1902.sp000885 |issn=0022-3751 |pmc=1540505 |pmid=16992591}}</ref> * (with Otto Rosenheim) 'The non-existence of "protagon" as a definite chemical compound,' ''Journal of Physiology'' 36:1 (1907), 1–16<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Rosenheim |first1=Otto |last2=Tebb |first2=M. Christine |date=1907-08-27 |title=The non-existence of 'protagon' as a definite chemical compound |journal=The Journal of Physiology |language=en |volume=36 |issue=1 |pages=1–16 |doi=10.1113/jphysiol.1907.sp001211 |issn=0022-3751 |pmc=1533725 |pmid=16992879}}</ref>
== References == <!-- Inline citations added to your article will automatically display here. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:REFB for instructions on how to add citations. --> {{reflist}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tebb, Mary Christine}} Category:1868 births Category:1953 deaths Category:Alumni of Bedford College, London Category:Alumni of Girton College, Cambridge Category:20th-century English women scientists Category:19th-century English women scientists Category:Women physiologists Category:English physiologists