With thanks to Historian Debbie Cameron for telling me about Mabel
Educated at home, Mabel moved to Oxford in 1895 after the death of her parents. She began to teach herself chemistry and biology from books, as well as attending classes at Oxford University between 1896 and 1899, even though women were not at that time allowed to receive degrees. Mabel continued her studies at the University of Copenhagen, Cambridge University and New York University.
Mabel began to work with Francis Gotch at the physiology department in Oxford and he helped her to have one of her papers published by the Royal Society in 1906.
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| Mabel in her Laboratory |
From 1904, Mabel worked with John Scott Haldane on measuring the carbon dioxide tension in the human lung. After studying the differences between healthy and ill people, the two continued to investigate the effects of altitude on respiration - it is this work that they are most famous for. Mabel's observations of the effects of full altitude acclimatisation on carbon dioxide tension and haemoglobin remain accepted and relevant today.
In 1907, FitzGerald was awarded a Rockefeller travelling scholarship, which allowed her to travel. She went to work in NewYork and Toronto.
In 1911 Mabel joined C. Gordon Douglas and several other scientists in the now famous Pike’s Peak Expedition in Colorado, led by John Scott Haldane, to investigate human respiration at high altitudes. As the only woman, she was not allowed to travel to the Peak with the men. Instead she travelled alone with her mule around the high and remote mining towns of Colorado to measure the long-term effects of altitude on the people living there. Mabel published her observations as ‘The Changes in Breathing and the Blood in Various High Altitudes’ in 1913, which is what she become most famous for.
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| Pike's Peak Expedition |
In the summer of 1913 in North Carolina, Mabel made measurements on the breathing and the blood of a total of 43 adult residents chosen from three different locations in the Southern Appalachian chain.
Mabel returned to Britain in 1915 to work as a clinical pathologist at Edinburgh Infirmary, a position that had become vacant due to the war.
During the late 1930s, Mabel retired to Oxford to care for her ageing sisters, who, all unmarried, still lived together in a house in Crick Road. She lectured in Bacteriology.
For more than two decades, Mabel FitzGerald was almost forgotten by scientists, until she was ‘rediscovered’ in the course of the centenary celebrations of the birth of her mentor, John Scott Haldane, in 1960.
On her 100th birthday, Mabel Fitzgerald finally received academic recognition for her scientific work, as she was awarded an honorary Master of Arts (MA) by Oxford University.
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| Mabel receiving her Degree |
Mabel died in Oxford on 24th August 1973. Her papers (Nachlass) are held by The Bodleian Library in Oxford.
Sources:
Photo of Mabel as a young woman, in the Laboratory, The Pikes Peak Expedition and receiving her degree. Credits in the article in the links below.
https://www.dpag.ox.ac.uk/fil…/about-us/mabel-fitzgerald.pdf
http://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/archivesandmanuscripts/2016/03/03/mabelfitzgerald_1/
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