- Julia Bell
:"Not to be confused with artist
Julie Bell ."Julia Bell (January 28 ,1879 –April 26 ,1979 ) was a pioneering Englishhuman geneticist .Greta Jones, ‘Bell, Julia (1879–1979)’, "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography", Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/38514, accessed 10 May 2008] ]Julia Bell graduated in
mathematics at Trinity College,Dublin . After six years investigatingsolar parallax at Cambridge Observatory, she moved toUniversity College London and obtained a position there as an assistant instatistics . It was hermentor , themathematician Karl Pearson (1857-1936), one of the founders of modernstatistics , who prompted her to change tomedicine in 1914. She studied at theLondon School of Medicine for Women (Royal Free Hospital ). She qualified in 1920 and was elected a Fellow of theRoyal College of Physicians in 1938.Working as a member of the
permanent staff of the Medical Research Council at theGalton Laboratory , University College, Julia Bell did pioneering work in documenting the familial nature of many diseases. She wrote most of the sections in a unique series known as "The Treasury of Human Inheritance" published between 1909 and 1958, from The Galton Lab. Bell's "combination of mathematical training, genetic knowledge and clinical expertise yielded numerous important insights into human inheritance first appearing in the "Treasury"," Harper noted [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15735957&dopt=Abstract] . Julia Bell's "Treasury of Human Inheritance" "remains a valuable scientific as well as an historical record of the genetics of a range of important inherited disorders."In 1937 Julia Bell published a landmark article with JBS Haldane reporting that there is
linkage between thegene s forcolourblindness andhaemophilia on theX chromosome . This discovery was a key step toward the mapping of thehuman genome .Julia Bell kept working actively for many years. At age 80 she wrote an original article on
rubella andpregnancy . She did not retire until she was 86. She reached the age of 100 years and kept in touch with genetics until her death.Besides the
Martin-Bell syndrome , now known as thefragile X syndrome , Julia Bell's name is associated with five forms ofbrachydactyly .References
*Bell, J.; Haldane, J. B. S.: The linkage between the genes for colour-blindness and haemophilia in man. Proc. Roy. Soc. London 123B: 119-150, 1937.
* [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15735957&dopt=Abstract Julia Bell and the Treasury of Human Inheritance] by Peter S. Harper.
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