Our friend and mentor Delphine Parrott, who has died aged 87, was a pioneering scientist who made seminal contributions to the emerging science of immunology.
Delphine was born in Dulwich, south-east London, to John and Dulce Vera Parrott. Her parents divorced, and her mother later married Jack Richards.
After attending James Allen’s girls’ school in Dulwich, Delphine graduated with a degree in physiology from Bedford College, London, in 1949 and a PhD from King’s College hospital medical school three years later. Initially she worked as an endocrinologist, but in 1960 she moved to the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in Mill Hill, north London, to study the thymus, the function of which was unknown. She was working with mice and one of her experiments was to determine the effect of removing the thymus. Delphine discovered that removing the thymus produced profoundly immunosuppressed animals. This led to a paper in Nature, which appeared at about the same time that other scientists (Jacques Miller and Tony Davies) were concluding that the thymus produces immunocompetent cells, later called T-cells.
In 1964, working with Maria de Sousa, she discovered that the lymph nodes of thymectomised mice had large areas of missing cells. Delphine and Maria named those areas “thymus-dependent areas”, and published their findings in Nature and the Journal of Experimental Medicine in 1966. This was the beginning of the science of T-cell immunology, which has led to many clinical advances including organ transplantation.
In 1967 Delphine moved to Glasgow University to become a senior lecturer in the department of bacteriology and immunology, and in 1973 she was given a personal chair at Glasgow, the first female professor at the university. We worked with her during the 1970s in Glasgow; she was a superb mentor to her young colleagues. Delphine was a very thoughtful scientist; as well as teaching us the scientific method, she gave us a sense of fun and appreciation of the excitement of discovery. She continued to make important discoveries about lymphocyte recirculation, oral tolerance and gut immunology.
Delphine was made head of department and Gardiner professor in 1980; she retired in 1990. She then moved back to Mill Hill, where for the next 26 years she was an avid gardener. She was very popular and her evident joy of life and eclectic interests won her many friends.
She leaves a number of cousins.
