Muriel Robertson

{{Short description|Scottish protozoologist, bacteriologist (1883–1973)}} {{Use dmy dates|date=August 2017}} {{Infobox scientist | honorific_prefix = | name = Muriel Robertson | honorific_suffix = {{post-nominals|country=GBR-cats|size=100%|FRS}}, FRSTM | native_name = | native_name_lang = | image = Muriel Robertson.jpg | image_size = | alt = black and white portrait photograph of Muriel Robertson wearing spectacles | caption = | birth_date = {{birth date|df=y|1883|04|08}} | birth_place = Glasgow, Scotland | death_date = {{death date and age|df=y|1973|06|14|1883|04|08}} | death_place = Derry, Northern Ireland | fields = | workplaces = Lister Institute | patrons = | education = | alma_mater = University of Glasgow | thesis_title = A study of the life histories of certain trypanosomes | thesis_url =  | thesis_year =  | doctoral_advisor =  | academic_advisors = | doctoral_students = | notable_students = | known_for = protozoology and bacteriology<br/>lifecycle of Trypanosoma gambiense in blood and in its insect carrier, the tsetse fly | influences = | influenced = | awards = | author_abbrev_bot = | author_abbrev_zoo = | spouse =  | partner =  | children = | signature =  | signature_alt = | website =  | footnotes = }}

'''Muriel Robertson''' {{post-nominals|country=GBR-cats|FRS}},<ref name ="frs"/> {{small|FRSTM, F.I.Biol}} (8 April 1883 – 14 June 1973)<ref name ="frs"/><ref>[http://www.ukwhoswho.com/view/article/oupww/whowaswho/U159018 ROBERTSON, Muriel, ''Who Was Who'' A & C Black, 1920–2008; online edn, Oxford University Press, December 2007, accessed 9 Jan 2012]</ref> was a Scottish protozoologist and bacteriologist at the Lister Institute, London<ref name ="frs">{{Cite journal | last1 = Bishop | first1 = A. | last2 = Miles | first2 = A. | doi = 10.1098/rsbm.1974.0014 | doi-access = free| title = Muriel Robertson. 1883-1973 | journal = Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society | volume = 20 | pages = 316–347 | year = 1974 | jstor = 769644| pmid = 11615759| s2cid = 26594618 }}</ref> from 1915 to 1961. She made key discoveries of the life cycle of trypanosomes.<ref name ="Glasgow">{{Cite web |url=http://www.universitystory.gla.ac.uk/biography/?id=WH0720&type=P |title=University of Glasgow Biography – accessed 9 January 2012 |access-date=9 January 2012 |archive-date=17 August 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170817075435/http://www.universitystory.gla.ac.uk/biography/?id=WH0720&type=P |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal | last1 = Howie | first1 = J. | title = Portraits from memory. 16—Muriel Robertson, FRS (1883–1973) | journal = British Medical Journal (Clinical Research Ed.) | volume = 295 | issue = 6589 | pages = 41 | year = 1987 | pmid = 3113608 | pmc = 1246912 | doi=10.1136/bmj.295.6589.41 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal | title = Dr Muriel Robertson | author = Anon | journal = Nature | volume = 244 | issue = 5417 | pages = 529–530 | year = 1973 | doi = 10.1038/244529c0 | pmid = 4583123 | bibcode = 1973Natur.244..529. | doi-access = free }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal | title = Muriel Robertson | journal = British Medical Journal | author = Anon | volume = 3 | issue = 5871 | pages = 112–113 | year = 1973 | pmid = 4577834 | pmc=1586552 | doi=10.1136/bmj.3.5871.112 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal | title = Muriel Robertson | author = Anon | journal = Lancet | volume = 2 | issue = 7819 | pages = 52 | year = 1973 | pmid = 4123338 | doi = 10.1016/S0140-6736(73)91998-3 | url = https://zenodo.org/record/1797838 }}</ref> She was one of the founding members of the Society for Microbiology along with Alexander Fleming and Marjory Stephenson.

==Early life and education== Robertson was born in Glasgow, the seventh of 12 children of Elizabeth Ritter and her husband, engineer Robert Andrew Robertson.<ref name ="frs"/> Up to the time of her entry to the University of Glasgow she was taught at home. After her father's sudden death, when she was 16, her initial thoughts were to study medicine; but her mother insisted on her taking a degree in Arts first.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |last1=Bishop |first1=Ann |last2=Miles |first2=Arnold Ashley |date=December 1974 |title=Muriel Robertson, 1883-1973 |url=https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbm.1974.0014 |journal=Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society |language=en |volume=20 |pages=316–347 |doi=10.1098/rsbm.1974.0014 |doi-access=free|pmid=11615759 |s2cid=26594618 |issn=0080-4606|url-access=subscription }}</ref> Preliminary scientific courses could be included in such a degree, and it was there she acquired her first formal scientific teaching. It was in studying with Graham Kerr that she was given her first chance to work on the life cycles of protozoa.<ref name=":0" /> This would prove a major theme and interest for the rest of her life.<ref name=":0" /> She worked for two years in Glasgow after graduating. An early project was a study of ''Pseudospora volvocis'', a protozoan parasite of the alga ''Volvox''.

==Career== In 1907 she was awarded a Carnegie Fellowship,<ref name=":0" /> which she held from 1907 to 1910. With this, she was able moved to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) to study trypanosome infections in reptiles, being provided with space to work by Arthur Willey, curator of the museum at Colombo She then joined the staff at the Lister Institute in London under Professor Edward Alfred Minchin from 1910 to 1911. thumb|Muriel Robertson It was at this time that a serious outbreak of sleeping sickness occurred in Uganda, believed to be responsible for more than 200,000 deaths.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Berrang-Ford |first=Lea |date=Dec 2006 |title=Sleeping sickness in Uganda: revisiting current and historical distributions |journal=African Health Sciences |volume=6 |issue=4 |pages=223–231|pmid=17604511 |pmc=1832067 }}</ref> Three successive commissions were sent to study the disease, under the auspices of the Royal Society. Robertson was appointed protozoologist to what was then the Uganda Protectorate, from 1911 to 1914. She worked in the Royal Society laboratory at Mpumu, close to Lake Victoria Nyanza: the epicentre of the disease. At the laboratory she researched the lifecycle of ''Trypanosoma gambiense'' (which causes African trypanosomiasis or sleeping sickness) in blood and in its insect carrier, the tsetse fly, publishing her ground-breaking results,<ref name="Glasgow" /> in particular establishing the path by which the trypanosome moves to the salivary glands of the fly. In 1923 she obtained her Doctor of Science from the University of Glasgow for a thesis entitled ''A study of the life histories of certain trypanosomes'',<ref>{{Cite journal | last1 = Miles | first1 = A. A. | title = Muriel Robertson, 1883–1973 | journal = Journal of General Microbiology | volume = 95 | issue = 1 | pages = 1–8 | year = 1976 | pmid = 784900 | doi=10.1099/00221287-95-1-1 | doi-access = free }}</ref> which involved cytological studies of extreme delicacy. A review of this research in her obituary,<ref>{{Cite journal |date=August 1973 |title=Dr Muriel Robertson |journal=Nature |language=en |volume=244 |issue=5417 |pages=529–530 |doi=10.1038/244529c0 |pmid=4583123 |bibcode=1973Natur.244..529. |s2cid=4203974 |issn=1476-4687|doi-access=free }}</ref> in the journal Nature, states: ''<nowiki>''</nowiki>Her work on this subject has never been superseded nor indeed equalled, and the accuracy of some of her conclusions ... is only now being fully appreciated.".''

On the creation of the Tropical Medical Research Committee by the Medical Research Council in 1936,<ref>"Medicine in the Tropics." Times [London, England] 4 March 1936: 14. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 12 June 2017.</ref> Robertson was amongst the first of those elected to the Committee.

Robertson returned to the Lister Institute in 1914 shortly before World War I. Except for a period at the Institute of Animal Pathology in Cambridge during the Second World War, she worked at the Lister Institute until 1961. Most of her work was as a protozoologist, but she worked on bacteriology during both world wars. Her work helped clarify and classify the anaerobic bacteria (''Clostridia'') primarily responsible for gas-gangrene.

She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1947,<ref name="frs"/> in the same year as Dorothy Hodgkin, and only two years after the first women, Marjory Stephenson and Kathleen Lonsdale, were elected. The following year, she became an Honorary Doctor of Law (LLD) at the University of Glasgow. She was also a fellow of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and of the Institute of Biology, and a member of the Pathological Society, the Society for Experimental Biology and the Medical Research Club. She was a founder of the Society of General Microbiology and served on its council from 1945 to 1948.

After officially retiring in 1948, Robertson continued to work, sponsored by the Agricultural Research Council, teaching her skills to research workers at the Lister Institute until 1961.<ref>Dr R. A. Kekwick. "Dr Muriel Robertson." Times [London, England] 18 July 1973: 18. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 12 June 2017.</ref> She suffered from acute glaucoma in the 1950s and one eye was removed.<ref name ="Glasgow"/> She continued work in Cambridge for a short period before finally retiring to the family estate in Limavady in Northern Ireland. After a period of illness, she died at Altnagelvin Area Hospital in Derry on 14 June 1973.<ref>P. H. Clarke, 'Robertson, Muriel (1883–1973)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/51770accessed 16 Oct 2012]; Muriel Robertson (1883–1973): {{doi|10.1093/ref:odnb/51770}}</ref>

== Commemoration == Robertson is described as a "Trailblazer" by the tour company Gallus Pedals, which organises bicycle tours in Glasgow. The company state on their website that ten women inspired the individual names of the bikes, and include a biography of each in several different categories. The category "Pioneers in Science and Medicine" includes Robertson, Marion Gilchrist and Dorothea Chalmers Smith. <ref>{{Cite web |last=mgfheaney |date=2023-02-08 |title=Famous Glaswegian Women: Trailblazers Who Inspired Gallus Pedals |url=https://www.galluspedals.com/post/trailblazers-the-10-women-who-inspired-gallus-pedals |access-date=2026-05-07 |website=Gallus Pedals Tours |language=en}}</ref>

== See also == *Protistology

==References== {{Reflist}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Robertson, Muriel}} Category:Alumni of the University of Glasgow Category:20th-century Scottish women scientists Category:Female fellows of the Royal Society Category:1883 births Category:1973 deaths Category:Scientists from Glasgow Category:20th-century Scottish biologists * Category:20th-century British women biologists Category:British fellows of the Royal Society