My mother, Naomi Klenerman, who has died aged 81, was part of a wave of talented doctors and biomedical scientists who migrated to Britain from South Africa in the postwar era.
Born in Johannesburg to Molly and Joe Sacks, themselves immigrants from Latvia and Lithuania, she began her studies at Jeppe high school for girls, where she excelled in many subjects, but particularly developed a love of science. Aged 16, she won a place to the University of Witwatersrand, where she studied biology, specialising in embryology, and where she was influenced by, among others, the anthropologist Raymond Dart and the geneticist Sydney Brenner.
She married Leslie Klenerman in 1954 and moved with him to the UK, where she worked at the Medical Research Council’s radiobiology unit at the Hammersmith hospital. Thereafter she followed his career as he trained in orthopaedic surgery, moving to Oswestry, Shropshire, back to north London and then on to Liverpool, where he became professor of orthopaedics.
Naomi was a strong and spirited character, who threw herself into everything she did with enormous energy. After retirement from Liverpool, she and Leslie lived for many years in her beloved Ceiriog valley in north Wales, and there she campaigned for the protection of the landscape and for its recognition as an area of outstanding natural beauty, addressing the local impact of wind farms, and working with the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales. Having moved from Wales in her last years, she continued her work in the community in Cambridge.
Realising from her own experiences the challenges facing those migrating to the UK, she warmly welcomed the graduate students coming from abroad for the courses Leslie ran, organising many events for them. Throughout this, anybody who interacted with Naomi would have been subject to the most extraordinary levels of generosity, including her wonderful cooking. She had enormous empathy and time for everybody.
Although a scientist by training, she embraced the arts, in her later years undertaking an MA in English and supporting art galleries, concert halls and theatres up and down the country. She leaves behind a huge library of cookbooks, and wonderfully stocked and tended gardens in her current and previous houses.
She is survived by Leslie, two children, David and me – who have followed her into science – and four grandchildren.
