Julia Bell

Julia Bell attended Girton College in Cambridge and took the Mathematical Tripos exam in 1901.Ogilvie, Marilyn Bailey and Joy Harvey, The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science: Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times to the Mid 20th Century Routledge (2000) Because women could not officially receive degrees from Oxford or Cambridge, she was awarded a master's degree at Trinity College, Dublin for her work investigating solar parallax at Cambridge Observatory.Stratton, F.J.M. "The History of the Cambridge Observatories" Annals of the Solar Physics Observatory, Cambridge Vol. I (1949)

In 1908, she started work at University College London as assistant to Karl Pearson (1857–1936), professor of applied mathematics, director of the Galton Laboratory for National Eugenics at University College, London {{Cite ODNB |last=Jones |first=Greta |title=Bell, Julia (1879–1979), geneticist |url=https://www.oxforddnb.com/display/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-38514 |access-date=2024-02-06 |date=2004 |language=en |doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/38514}}{{Cite web |title=Julia Bell {{!}} RCP Museum |url=https://history.rcplondon.ac.uk/inspiring-physicians/julia-bell |access-date=2024-02-06 |website=history.rcplondon.ac.uk}} and one of the founders of modern statistics. Bell's predecessor as assistant to Karl Pearson was the mathematician Alice Lee who had resigned due to ill-health.

Bell's position as Assistant to Karl Pearson was funded by Francis Galton's endowment to University College London to support eugenics research.{{Cite web |last=Cain |first=Joe |date=2019-05-24 |title=Eugenics Money at UCL from Francis Galton |url=https://profjoecain.net/eugenics-money-ucl-university-college-london/ |access-date=2024-02-06 |website=Professor Joe Cain |language=en-GB}} Pearson described the role of his Assistant as "a post well suited to a woman living with her family in London and keen on scientific work" because the Assistant's salary of £100 a year was unattractive to men compared with the annual salary of £250 year paid for the position of Galton Laboratory Research Fellow.{{Cite journal |last=Love |first=Rosaleen |date=1979 |title='Alice in Eugenics-Land': Feminism and Eugenics in the scientific careers of Alice Lee and Ethel Elderton |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00033797900200451 |journal=Annals of Science |language=en |volume=36 |issue=2 |pages=145–158 |doi=10.1080/00033797900200451 |issn=0003-3790|url-access=subscription }} Bell's remuneration for her work as Pearson's assistant was equivalent to the pay of a non-academic part-time clerk at this time. Like other women scientists of the period, Bell's early professional life throughout the 1920s was defined by low pay and short-term research contracts. In 1921, Bell was awarded a Fellowship worth £300 p.a. by the Medical Research Council.{{Cite web |last=Farrall |first=Lyndsay Andrew |date=1969 |title=The origins and growth of the English eugenics movement 1865-1925 (PhD Thesis, Indiana University, 1969) |url=https://www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/file/10795 |website=UCL Science and Technology Studies}}

In 1914, Karl Pearson had asked Bell to augment the expertise of the Galton Laboratory staff by taking a degree in medicine.{{Cite web |title=La Bell Époque: A Century of Julia Bell (part 1) {{!}} RCP Museum |url=https://history.rcplondon.ac.uk/blog/la-bell-epoque-century-julia-bell-part-1 |access-date=2024-01-26 |website=history.rcplondon.ac.uk}} Bell's decision to train as a doctor was informed by her own interest in the more observational aspects of the study of heredity. She studied at the London School of Medicine for Women (Royal Free Hospital) which had been the first medical school in Britain to admit women, and the only school to do so until 1886.{{Cite web |title=LONDON SCHOOL OF MEDICINE FOR WOMEN {{!}} London Metropolitan Archives |url=https://search.lma.gov.uk/scripts/mwimain.dll/144/LMA_OPAC/web_detail?SESSIONSEARCH&exp=refd%20H72/SM |access-date=2024-02-11 |website=search.lma.gov.uk}} In the years prior to the outbreak of the First World War, Bell was the only staff member of the Galton Lab who was medically qualified. Bell qualified MRCS LRCP in 1920, was awarded membership of the Royal College of Physicians and made Galton research fellow under the [https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/record?catid=121&catln=1 Medical Research Council] in 1926, and was elected Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1938, being only the fourth woman to be so elected.

Between 1907 and 1925, Bell was employed intermittently in both the Biometric and Galton Laboratories, both of which sat within the Department of Applied Statistics at UCL under the directorshop of Karl Pearson. At the time of Pearson's retirement in 1933, Bell was one of five long-term members of staff who had been in place since 1922, along with Ethel Elderton, Dr. Percy Stocks, Egon Pearson, and Mary Noel Karn. In 1932, Bell had joined the genetics committee of the Medical Research Council and worked as a permanent member of the scientific staff of the Medical Research Council 1933-1944.{{Cite web |title=Vignette: pioneering geneticist, Julia Bell (1879-1979) |url=https://www.mddus.com/resources/publications/publications-library/insight/spring-2012/vignette-julia-bell |access-date=2024-02-06 |website=MDDUS |language=en}} Her subsequent work led to her receiving the Weldon memorial prize and medal for biometry awarded by Oxford University in 1941. Bell worked within the Galton Laboratory for 57 years, working there from 1908 until her retirement in 1965 at age 86.

Julia Bell's early output at the Galton Laboratory included co-authoring "A Statistical Study of Oral Temperatures in School Children with Special Reference to Parental, Environmental and Class Differences" in 1914.{{Cite book |last1=Williams |first1=Mary Hamilton |url=http://archive.org/details/galtonlab077 |title=A Statistical Study of Oral Temperatures in School Children with Special Reference to Parental, Environmental, and Class Differences |last2=Bell |first2=Julia |author-link2=Julia Bell |last3=Pearson |first3=Karl |author-link3=Karl Pearson |date=1914 |publisher=Dulau and Co |others=The UCL Institute of Education |page=78}} The other authors were Mary Hamilton Williams and Karl Pearson. The study compared the temperatures of 4,654 children at different schools in Worcestershire, England, to determine whether conditions like rheumatism and phthisis were hereditary. They concluded that "there is a real and marked difference in temperature between the children of the higher and lower social classes," a difference that they argued was due to poverty and to some extent heredity rather than "home environment" or "nourishment". They continue: "The poor are largely poor because of their defective physique, and the segregation of those with defective physique cannot be obviated, as long as the birth-rate is not directly determined by the physique of the parents."

In 1917 and 1919, Bell published a multi-part series titled A study of the long bones of the English skeleton Part I, Part I: Section II, co-authored with Karl Pearson.{{Cite book |last1=Pearson |first1=Karl |url=http://archive.org/details/galtonlab030 |title=A study of the long bones of the English skeleton. Part I |last2=Bell |first2=Julia |date=1917 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |others=The UCL Institute of Education}}{{Cite book |last1=Pearson |first1=Karl |url=http://archive.org/details/galtonlab031 |title=A study of the long bones of the English skeleton. Part I, section II |last2=Bell |first2=Julia |date=1919 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |others=The UCL Institute of Education}} Other women working at the Galton Laboratory who contributed to this work included: Assistant E. Augusta Jones (formerly Secretary to Francis Galton{{Cite web |title=Galton Papers, GALTON/2/10/9/20 |url=https://archives.ucl.ac.uk/CalmView/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=GALTON/2/10/9/20&AddBasket=GALTON/2/10/9/20 |access-date=2024-02-06 |website=UCL Special Collections}}), Assistant and mathematician Eleanor Pairman, Assistant Mary Seeger, microscopist Marion Radford,{{Cite thesis |title=A place of teaching and research: University College London and the origins of the research university in Britain 1890-1914 |url=https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10101355/ |publisher=UCL (University College London) |date=2001 |degree=Doctoral |first=Mark |last=Pendleton}} Eva Bramley Moore, mathematician Alice Lee, and Assistant Eveline Y. Thomson. The work was part-funded by a donation from Gertrude H. Jones, a former Secretary to the Galton Laboratory. Pearson and Bell's analysis of the skeletal remains of different human populations and primates sought to identify "racial differences in man", informed by the pseudo-science of eugenics originally formulated by Francis Galton whose bequest had funded the Galton Laboratory.{{Cite web |last=UCL |date=2021-11-18 |title=Our Early History |url=https://www.ucl.ac.uk/statistics/our-early-history-1 |access-date=2024-02-06 |website=Statistical Science |language=en}}

Working as a member of the permanent staff of the Medical Research Council at the Galton Laboratory (renamed the Department of Human Genetics and Biometry in 1966), Julia Bell went on to do pioneering work in documenting the familial nature of many diseases.

Bell wrote most of the sections in the unique series The Treasury of Human Inheritance published by the Galton Laboratory between 1909 and 1956.{{Cite web |title=Treasury of human inheritance / edited by Karl Pearson, R.A. Fisher, L.S. Penrose. |url=https://wellcomecollection.org/works/pe2s8c7d |access-date=2024-02-06 |website=Wellcome Collection |language=en}} She was sole or lead author for all sections of Volume II: Nettleship Memorial Volume on Anomalies and Diseases of the Eye (1933), Volume IV: Nervous Diseases and Muscular Dystrophies (1948), and Volume V: On Hereditary Digital Anomalies (1951–58).{{Cite web |title=Treasury of Human Inheritance (1909-1958) {{!}} Eugenics Laboratory |url=https://profjoecain.net/publications-eugenics-laboratory/treasury-human-inheritance-eugenics-laboratory/ |access-date=2024-02-06 |website=Professor Joe Cain |language=en-GB}} Bell's "combination of mathematical training, genetic knowledge and clinical expertise yielded numerous important insights into human inheritance first appearing in the Treasury," Harper noted.{{cite journal | url=https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15735957&dopt=Abstract | pmid=15735957 | date=2005 | last1=Harper | first1=P. S. | title=Julia Bell and the Treasury of Human Inheritance | journal=Human Genetics | volume=116 | issue=5 | pages=422–432 | doi=10.1007/s00439-005-1264-5 }} Julia Bell's Treasury of Human Inheritance "remains a valuable scientific as well as an historical record of the genetics of a range of important inherited disorders."

In 1937, Julia Bell published a landmark article with J. B. S. Haldane which reported a linkage between the genes for colourblindness and haemophilia on the X chromosome.{{cite journal |last1=Bell |first1=J. |last2=Haldane |first2=J. B. S. |title=The Linkage between the Genes for Colour-Blindness and Haemophilia in Man |journal=Proceedings of the Royal Society B |volume=123 |issue=831 |pages=119–150 |year=1937 |doi=10.1098/rspb.1937.0046 |bibcode=1937RSPSB.123..119B |doi-access=free }} This discovery was a key step toward the mapping of the human genome.

In 1943, Bell co-authored with James Purdon Martin a paper on the link between a form of intellectual disability in children and the X-chromosomes of the parents, with the condition subsequently being named Martin–Bell syndrome.{{cite journal |last1=Martin |first1=J. P. |name-list-style=amp |last2=Bell |first2=J. |title=A pedigree of mental defect showing sex-linkage |journal=J. Neurol. Psychiatry |volume=6 |year=1943 |issue=3–4 |pages=154–157 |doi=10.1136/jnnp.6.3-4.154 |pmc=1090429 |pmid=21611430}}{{Cite web |last=King |first=Jesse |title=Julia Bell (1879-1979) {{!}} Embryo Project Encyclopedia |url=https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/julia-bell-1879-1979 |access-date=2024-02-06 |website=Arizona State University. School of Life Sciences. Center for Biology and Society. Embryo Project Encyclopedia. |issn=1940-5030}} It is now known as fragile X syndrome.

Julia Bell's 1951 work 'On Brachydactyly and Symphalangism' in Volume V: On Hereditary Digital Anomalies (1951–58) for The Treasury of Human Inheritance series was foundational for later research into the medical syndrome brachydactyly.{{Cite journal |last1=Temtamy |first1=Samia A. |last2=Aglan |first2=Mona S. |date=2008 |title=Brachydactyly |journal=Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases |volume=3 |issue=1 |pages=15 |doi=10.1186/1750-1172-3-15 |doi-access=free |pmid=18554391 |pmc=2441618 |issn=1750-1172}}{{Cite journal |last1=Pitt |first1=P. |last2=Williams |first2=I. |date=1985 |title=A new brachydactyly syndrome with similarities to Julia Bell types B and E |journal=Journal of Medical Genetics |volume=22 |issue=3 |pages=202–204 |doi=10.1136/jmg.22.3.202 |issn=0022-2593 |pmc=1049425 |pmid=4009643}}

Julia Bell kept working actively for many years. At age 82 and still working for the Galton Laboratory, she published "On rubella in pregnancy" in The British Medical Journal.{{Cite journal |last=Bell |first=Julia |date=1959-03-14 |title=On Rubella in Pregnancy |journal=British Medical Journal |volume=1 |issue=5123 |pages=686–688 |doi=10.1136/bmj.1.5123.686 |issn=0007-1447 |pmc=1993148 |pmid=13629090}} She retired at age 86; she kept in touch with genetics until her death at the age of 100.

The following Galton Laboratory publications authored or co-authored by Julia Bell are available on the UCL Modern Genetics Collection on Internet Archive. This collection has been made available for historical research purposes. Racist, ableist and classist ideas contained within this material do not reflect the current views of UCL.

• A Statistical Study of Oral Temperatures in School Children with Special Reference to Parental, Environmental, and Class Differences (1914)
• A study of the long bones of the English skeleton Part I (1917)
• A study of the long bones of the English skeleton Part I: Section II (1919)

The complete set of The Treasury of Human Inheritance including all sections authored or co-authored by Julia Bell is available online at the [https://wellcomecollection.org/works/pe2s8c7d Wellcome Collection].

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Category:1879 births

Category:1979 deaths

Category:English geneticists

Category:British women geneticists

Category:English women centenarians

Category:Alumni of the London School of Medicine for Women

Category:Academics of University College London

Category:People from Sherwood, Nottingham

Category:Human geneticists

Category:English women academics

Category:Steamboat ladies

Category:English eugenicists

Category:Proponents of scientific racism