Hanson , Emmeline Jean , 1919-1973 , biologist

Born in Newhall, Derbyshire, 1919; educated at the Girls' High School, Burton-on-Trent, 1930-1938; read Zoology at Bedford College, London, 1938-1941; research student at Bedford College, 1941-1942, working on the histology of the vascular system of annelids; and worked at the Strangeways laboratory, Cambridge, 1941-1944; demonstrator in Zoology at Bedford College, 1944-1948; joined the Biophysical Research Unit at King's College London established by John Randall, 1948; researched the structural basis of muscular contraction, and moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology biology department under Professor Francis O Schmitt as a Rockefeller Foundation Research Fellow, 1953; collaborated with Hugh Esmor Huxley and formulated and tested the sliding filament hypothesis of muscular contraction; returned to the Biophysics Research Unit, 1954; continued research on sliding filament mechanism of muscular contraction, particularly in non striated muscles of invertebrates, the morphology of smooth muscle in invertebrates, the molecular structure of actin and bacterial flagella; Professor of Biology, University of London, 1966; elected fellow of the Royal Society, 1967; director of Muscle Biophysics Unit at King's College London, 1970; died 1973.