Jean Orr-Ewing
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Jean Orr-Ewing (28 April 1897 – 17 November 1944) was a pathologist and a bacteriologist[1] who was part of the small team of scientists who first isolated and purified penicillin for the treatment of bacterial infection.
Orr-Ewing, the daughter of John Orr-Ewing and his first wife Ellen Clarissa (née Kennard), was born on 28 April 1897.[2] Her paternal grandfather was Sir Archibald Orr-Ewing, 1st Baronet[3] and her maternal grandfather, Howard John Kennard, was co-founder of the London Stereoscopic and Photographic Company.[4]
She went to Boston House School in Eastbourne[5] and later, from 1916 to 1920, she was a student at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.[6] She passed her exam in pathology in December 1920 and was awarded a BA degree in June 1921,[7](p274 & 740) the year after women were first admitted to degrees at Oxford. She continued her medical training with clinical work at St Mary's Hospital, London, taking the Conjoint Diploma in 1923,[2] and being awarded a Bachelor of Medicine in 1924.[8](p306)[3] It was St Mary's Hospital, London where Alexander Fleming first discovered penicillin in 1928 (but was not able to isolate the main compound so it could be properly purified for production in large amounts).
She then worked at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, of Oxford University and was awarded a Schorstein Research Fellowship in Medical Science for two years.[9] At that time she was elected to a research fellowship at Lady Margaret Hall.[6] From 1932 to 1939 she held a tutorship in the Oxford Society of Home Students[2] and was also elected as a tutorial fellow at Lady Margaret Hall from 1938.[10] She was the first dedicated science tutorial fellow at the college,[6] and "At the outbreak of the second war she was one of only two tutorial fellows in science in the five women's colleges".[11]
She died on 17 November 1944.[2]
