The Nobel Mabel. The woman who discovered that low oxygen stimulates hemoglobin production.

Abstract

The research of Mabel Purefoy FitzGerald (1872-1973) was recently recognized by Sir Peter Ratcliffe in his public lecture at the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine as a critical step in the recent delineation of the oxygen sensing pathway. This brief article offers a tantalizing glimpse into the life of a woman whose scientific career spanned four countries, worked with eminent scientists and clinicians including Haldane and Osler, and published important physiologic discoveries. Her accomplishments and astounding life were lost to history for more than one hundred years and it is time to bring her back. When this diminutive and proper English woman set out on her own to the wild and remote mining towns of Colorado, little did she know that this would be the moment for which she would be remembered in her long, productive research career and ludicrous struggle to become a physician more than a century ago. Hers is an extraordinary tale of privilege, hardship, discrimination, shocking perseverance, and grand adventure.