The scientific life of Marjory Stephenson | 91TV
Transcript
- Maggie VO: 91TV was founded in 1660,
- and for the first 285 years it was a place
- exclusively for men.
- Finally, in 1945,
- Kathleen Lonsdale and Marjory Stephenson
- became the first two female fellows.
- On the 80th anniversary of Marjory Stephenson's election.
- I spent a day with biochemist Judy Armitage,
- herself a fellow of the Royal Society,
- to discover more about Marjory’s life and work.
- Judy: “Distinguished as a biochemist, particularly
- in the field of bacterial metabolism.”
- And we see this.
- “We, the undersigned, propose and recommend” -
- And they've crossed out ‘him’ -
- - Yes! - “...as deserving that honour
- and is likely to become a useful and valuable member.”
- Maggie: President of the Society for General Microbiology.
- - Oh, yeah, I think that's key.
- 1943-ish, she started this drive
- to bring microbiologists together.
- She had this vision that all microbiologists
- ought to be talking to each other.
- - Yes - because microbes
- actually interact with each other.
- - I see. So just as they communicate, we should communicate.
- - So she was the driving force for the formation of the
- Society for General Microbiology.
- They tried to persuade her to be the first president,
- but she didn't think she was worthy.
- And Alexander Fleming became the first president.
- When his stint finished, he persuaded her to be the second president.
- And of course, another connection from that
- is I became president of the Microbiology Society!
- Maggie VO: Marjory died only three years later, in 1948.
- But what she achieved in her 63 years
- was extraordinary.
- Born in Burwell, a small town near Cambridge,
- she grew up in the flat, watery landscape of the Fens.
- Her father was a successful farmer who was interested
- in contemporary science.
- At an early age,
- her intelligence was recognised by her governess,
- and when she was 18, her mother insisted she go to
- Newnham College, Cambridge.
- - There she is.
- - It's all women!
- - So it's an all women college. - Yes
- - And, of course, you know, at that time,
- the biochemistry department wouldn't
- let women into the labs, so Newnham had to have its own labs.
- So, the women, did their experimental work-
- - here within the safe confines of a ladies college?
- - Exactly. - How strange.
- - But I can imagine, then, this was really important.
- Maggie VO: In Marjory’s time at Newnham,
- women could study, but were not awarded degrees.
- 15 years after she graduated, there was a vote on whether
- women should be granted full membership of the university,
- with equal degrees to the men.
- The motion failed
- and celebrating their victory, almost 1500 male students
- attacked Newnham College, chanting “We don't want women”,
- smashing windows, and attempting to break down the gates.
- Marjory's reaction to the culture among male academics was withering.
- - “These young men fuss about their reputations
- as if they were ageing virgins in a Victorian novel.”
- you know, isn't that brilliant?
- - Yes, yes. - She really was disparaging
- about young men going after fame and fortune.
- Maggie VO: After graduating, Marjory moved to London
- to teach household science to young women,
- which she found totally unfulfilling.
- Luckily, she met a professor at University College London
- who invited her to join his research group.
- Just as her career in research was about to take off,
- The First World War broke out.
- Marjory immediately volunteered for the Red Cross
- and in October 1914,
- she was one of the very first members
- of a Volunteer Aid Detachment to be sent abroad.
- In 1917, under Marjory's management,
- 2.4 million meals were prepared for injured soldiers,
- including a mix of wheat flour and enzymes,
- for men who could not digest regular rations.
- By the end of the war,
- she was the recipient of multiple medals and awards,
- including an MBE.
- Returning to Cambridge, Marjory joined
- the Department of Biochemistry set up by Frederick Gowland Hopkins.
- Judy: I think he probably was a remarkable chap.
- Just look at this photograph.
- This one, I think is really striking.
- 1916: there are only nine people in the lab,
- and four of them are women.
- Maggie: And so who was responsible for that?
- - It has to be Gowland Hopkins.
- It must sort of encapsulate his effect on laboratory culture.
- And Marjory Stephenson.
- - There she is! - Yes.
- Hopkins appointed her in 1919,
- and that's when she started working on bacteria.
- She was persuaded to work on microbes because I think it was thought
- they were going to be a lot simpler.
- And, you know, it was a way of getting at the fundamental chemistry of things,
- - Yes.
- - Because that's what people are interested in is,
- you know, how we work.
- - Yes, and multiple cells and things like that.
- - But she realised very early on
- she had to grow the bacteria in sort of defined media.
- And then you feed them with different things
- and you see what comes out the other end, and that's...
- you can start then to think about what the chemistry must be.
- - So in the past, when people were studying bacteria-
- - They were growing in it some sort of broth, some sort of soup.
- - But not of a defined recipe? - Yes, exactly.
- Judy: She was looking at E. coli, eating formic acid, and realised that
- if you had them in oxygen, then you ended up
- with different end products to if you had them without oxygen.
- So there was something different going on
- If you had them in different environments.
- And it means you can look at anaerobic environments,
- you could look at inorganic environments,
- and you can then start to understand nowadays, you know,
- how can they digest plastics, or oil
- or anything else that we can't.
- And I find it remarkable that she was
- doing this in the sort of 1920s, 30s.
- Maggie VO: In 1928, Marjory and her colleague, Leonard Strickland,
- were the first scientists ever, to isolate a bacterial enzyme
- from the cell.
- - It changed the way that biochemistry was done,
- I think in general.
- But she also made us recognise
- that microbes are actually really very complex.
- She said that, yes,
- what you saw in animals and plants and microbes,
- yes they did have a lot in common,
- but when you got down to looking at microbes in general,
- they did an awful lot more.
- - Oh, I see.
- - We now know that they respond to huge ranges of signals.
- And that's, you know, how they communicate
- with each other and how they communicate
- with you, communicate with the plants and the soil.
- - So, I’m thinking of all the bacteria in my stomach!
- - We've got this much deeper
- understanding that's built on her legacy.
- Maggie VO: Although it was years before she had a permanent position,
- Marjory thrived in Hopkins’s Department of Biochemistry.
- In 1930, she published
- Bacterial Metabolism,
- which became required reading for microbiologists all over the world.
- She also embarked on a series of public radio broadcasts
- which inspired the next generation of microbiologists.
- D. D. Woods said, “I became interested
- in chemical microbiology at 8:30 p.m.
- on Friday the 9th of May, 1930,
- when I heard Marjory Stephenson's broadcast:
- Biochemistry - what it is
- and what it does.”
- Maggie: Oh I like this!
- Down the Microscope and what Alice Found There.
- “Alice was getting very tired of looking down the microscope,
- trying to see all the things her Professor
- told her she ought to see.”
- And this is actually written by Marjory?
- - Yes. Amazing picture.
- - Yes, because I was thinking, that’s Alice in Wonderland!
- What she's doing there? And who's that?
- “Hateful little things”, said Alice.
- “I don't believe they're there at all.
- “I wish I could go down there and have a look.”
- Judy: I mean, there is a bit of serious feminism,
- I think, that comes out in some of it.
- “When Adam delved and Eve span
- who was then the gentleman?”
- And there you have the male academic in the library,
- - With his books! - Reading and thinking.
- Maggie: just looking very relaxed there.
- - And there's a female academic-
- - Oh my goodness!
- - sitting in the cold
- with a Bunsen burner.
- - Oh yes, a Bunsen burner for warmth!
- I love this because it's the
- sort of thing I do for science communication for kids,
- but who was this for?
- - This was for the department.
- And it actually shows that people were witty and human.
- And I think what it does is it illustrates that this department,
- then, was sort of a vibrant community,
- who really got on with each other and-
- Maggie: Exchanged fun ideas!
- Judy: Yeah, I mean, I think she was an amazing character.
- “My dear Sidney, I propose to explode
- a rocket under your chair
- because I realise that if I don't, no one will.
- It is this, dear Sidney, your lecturing habit
- which has become very bad
- and must be remedied,
- because we cannot afford to let it go on.”
- Which is amazing, because, you know,
- I've heard from my old mentor, Pat Clarke,
- who was taught by her,
- that she wasn't a very good lecturer herself.
- - I see, so pot calling kettle black here!
- - A bit!
- But it was so important to her that the next generation were
- actually being taught and brought through.
- Judy: Her legacy, she thought,
- were her graduate students, and she gave them the credit
- for a lot of the research that they did when they were in her lab.
- - And they took that on. - So ego wasn’t involved?
- - No. - Because I know many academics
- who would subsume all the credit.
- - Yeah, you get no impression of there being an ego here.
- You get an impression of somebody who is just curious, really curious.
- She wants to know how things work and she passes on that training
- to her graduate students, and they go off and do great things.
- - And to me that's what I love to say to kids.
- Science is about being curious, asking questions and exploring that.
- And I think other things sometimes mussy it and get in the way.
- But if you can keep that purity, oh my goodness.
- - Yes!
- When she accepts admission to the Royal Society, it’s brilliant.
- But as a woman, you have lower expectations
- and having lower expectations
- - you just get on with the job. - Yes, yes.
- You’re not distracted by all the accolades and-
- - No, you’re not looking for the next prize
- or somebody to give you a big tick, you know,
- what you're looking for is the next result.
- Maggie VO: In a letter written when
- she knew she was dying, Marjory said,
- “I have just got on to the most interesting
- piece of research I have ever done and where it's going to turn next,
- I just don't know.”
Dame Maggie Aderin-Pocock and Professor Judy Armitage FRS join forces to uncover the life and legacy of Marjory Stephenson, a pioneer in the study of bacteria.
Find more about the Royal Society's work supporting and celebrating Women in STEM /news-resources/women-in-stem/
Directed by Peter Mann, produced by Spirited Pictures.
Thanks to the kind participation of the University of Cambridge Department of Biochemistry, Newnham College Cambridge, The Microbiology Society, The Wellcome Collection and the Imperial War Museum.
Special thanks to: Dr Francis Neary, Dr Birgitta Olofsson, Dr Katy Duncan, Dr Camilla Godlee, Frieda Midgley, Emma Menniss, Professor Michael Yudkin, Charlotte Mitchell, Professor Hilary Lappin-Scott, Victoria Sloyan, Keith Moore, Malcolm Linfield, Chloe Hambleton, Maia Davies, Ciara Avis, Sakina Dhirani, Martha Richmond.
Archive:
Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge
Newnham College Cambridge
Veronica Van Heyningen
The Microbiology Society
91TV
Malcolm Linfield
The Imperial War Museum
Shutterstock
Alamy
About the Royal Society
91TV is a Fellowship of many of the world's most eminent scientists and is the oldest scientific academy in continuous existence.
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