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Brigid Balfour

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Brigid Balfour
Born
Brigid Mary Balfour

(1914-05-24)24 May 1914
London, England
Died1 March 1994(1994-03-01) (aged 79)
Hatfield, Hertfordshire, England[1]
Scientific career
InstitutionsNational Institute for Medical Research

Brigid Mary Balfour (24 May 1914 – 1 March 1994) was a British scientist who studied cellular morphology and ultrastructure in relation to immune function. She advanced the study of dendritic cells, realising that they were derived from Langerhans cells and played an important role in initiating and promoting immune reactions.[2]

Early life

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Brigid Balfour was born in 1914 in St George Hanover Square, London to Hylda Snow (née Paget) and Archibald Edward Balfour, a barrister.[3][4] Her maternal grandfather was Sir Richard Paget, a British politician and baronet.[citation needed]

Career

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Balfour began her career at the National Institute for Medical Research working in nutrition, as part of the Division of Biological Standards in 1945. In 1957, she became a member of the newly formed Division of Immunology, under John Humphrey, working alongside Brigitte Askonas and Walter Brocklehurst or Brockhurst.[2][5] She left the institute in 1978.[6]

Awards

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Publications

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  • Dale E. McFarlin and Brigid Balfour – "Contact Sensitivity in the Pig", Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology. Volume 29, 1973, pp 539–544. doi:10.1007/978-1-4615-9017-0_78
  • Brigid Balfour, Jacqueline A. O'Brien, M. Perera, J. Clarke, Tatjana Sumerska, Stella C. Knight – "The Effect of Veiled Cells on Lymphocyte Function", Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology. Volume 149, 1982, pp 447–454. doi:10.1007/978-1-4684-9066-4_62 ISBN 978-1-4684-9066-4

References

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  1. ^ Info re Dr Balfour's death, genesreunited.co.uk; accessed 9 April 2014.
  2. ^ a b "Sixty years of Immunology at NIMR". NIMR. MRC. Archived from the original on 21 February 2011. Retrieved 24 May 2022.
  3. ^ "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 25 July 2013.
  4. ^ Balfour, Ray. "Archibald Edward ("Duggy") Balfour". rootsweb.com. ancestry.com. Retrieved 24 May 2022.
  5. ^ J. H. Humphrey (1984). "Serendipity in immunology". Annual Review of Immunology. 2 (1): 1–22. doi:10.1146/annurev.iy.02.040184.000245. PMID 6100472.
  6. ^ "Women in Science". Wayback Machine. NIMR. Archived from the original on 20 March 2008. Retrieved 15 July 2013.