Jean Orr-Ewing

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Jean Orr-Ewing (1897–1944) was a British pathologist and bacteriologist who helped develop penicillin. She was part of the small Oxford team that first isolated and purified penicillin for treating bacterial infections.

Early life and education
She was born on 28 April 1897, the daughter of John Orr-Ewing and Ellen Clarissa Kennard. Her grandfather Sir Archibald Orr-Ewing, 1st Baronet, and her maternal grandfather, Howard John Kennard, co-founded the London Stereoscopic and Photographic Company. She attended Boston House School in Eastbourne, then studied at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford (1916–1920). She qualified in pathology in 1920 and earned a BA in 1921, becoming one of the first women to receive degrees from Oxford. She trained at St Mary’s Hospital, London, gaining the Conjoint Diploma in 1923 and the MBBS in 1924.

Scientific career
Orr-Ewing worked at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology under Georges Dreyer, and she remained at Oxford when Howard Florey became director in 1935. She and A. D. Gardner were among the few from Dreyer’s team who continued after Florey took over. She collaborated with Florey, Ernst Chain, and others on the isolation and purification of penicillin and studied how penicillin affected different bacteria. She co-authored the team’s early paper on using penicillin to treat infection and helped show that penicillin blocks bacterial cell division. Her name is on a memorial plaque outside the Oxford Botanic Garden honoring those who worked on penicillin.

Personal life and death
While working with diphtheria bacteria, she contracted a diphtheria infection that left her with a slight permanent weakness of the heart. Orr-Ewing died on 17 November 1944.

Mountaineering
Orr-Ewing was an accomplished climber. She helped found the Oxford University Women’s Mountaineering Club in the early 1920s, organized the Oxford University Women’s Iceland Expedition in 1934, and later climbed in Corsica and Switzerland. She became a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1938.