Dorothy M. Needham

Dorothy Mary Moyle Needham FRS (September 22, 1896 – December 22, 1987) was a English biochemist known for her work on the biochemistry of muscle. She was married to biochemist Joseph Needham.

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Dorothy Mary Moyle was born in London, to patent clerk John Moyle. She attended Claremont College, Stockport before enter Girton College at the University of Cambridge. At Girton she became interested in chemistry, and biochemistry in particular after attending the lectures of Frederick Gowland Hopkins. After completing undergraduate studies in 1919, she was offered a research position with Hopkins—one of the few scientific leaders at Cambridge at the time who offered research opportunities for women—and she earned an M.A. in 1923, and a Ph.D. in 1930.^[1]

Moyle's first major research, in collaboration with Dorothy L. Foster, focused on the interconversion of lactic acid and glycogen in muscle, recapitulating the work of Otto Meyerhof. After that, she studied the roles of succinic acid, fumaric acid, and malic acid in muscle metabolism, as well as the biochemical differences and relationships between aerobic and anaerobic pathways.^[2]

Notes

References

• Mikuláš Teich. "Dorothy Mary Moyle Needham, 22 September 1896 - 22 December 1987." Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, Vol. 49. (December, 2003), pp. 351-365.