My mother, Marion Macleod, who has died aged 86, was an academic microbiologist and medical sociologist. Marion was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, the daughter of Roland Fairman, a coach painter, and his wife, Rhoda (nee Finch), a cleaner. Evacuated at the outbreak of the second world war, Marion was sent first to Berwick-upon-Tweed and then to Shap in Cumberland (now Cumbria). In 1956, as a Harkness Fellow, Marion went to the US to study bacterial cytology at Harvard medical school and then, from 1957 to 1958, virology at the California Institute of Technology. Marion gave up her full-time academic work while bringing up three children and caring for elderly relatives, but later returned part time as a microbiology lecturer at Napier College, Edinburgh.

Source: The Guardian July 27, 2017 16:52 UTC