A fascinating almost text book but more a loving exploration into the animal world.
Doris Mackinnon (1883-1956) was a Scottish protozoologist and parasitologist. She attended Aberdeen University where she completed her BSc in 1906 and her PhD in 1914. She became a lecturer at Dundee University in 1916, and during the First World War she did vital work studying and diagnosing amoebic dysentery and other intestinal parasites that affected the soldiers. Many women got their first laboratory jobs during the First World War, especially in areas that would benefit the war effort such as the biomedical sciences and military technology. Most of those women chose (or were forced) to leave their scientific jobs when the war was over, but Doris Mackinnon continued to forge her career.
She became a lecturer at Kings College London in 1919, and then in 1927 she succeeded Julian Huxley as the head of the Zoology Department. She was the first female head of a department at Kings College at a time when there were very few female professors in the UK, especially in the sciences. She was an expert on the Protozoan parasites of insects, and studied how flies can spread diseases such as Typhoid fever. She set up and led the first non-medical centre for research into protozoa. Professor Mackinnon described several species which were new to science, and her colleagues named two genera after her – Dorisa and Dorisiella. She published over 40 scientific papers and a text book on Protozoa, as well as giving a series of radio lectures for children, which formed the basis of her book The Animal’s World. Professor Mackinnon lectured at Kings College for 30 years and teaching was something she took very seriously, she was famous for never repeating a lecture. Outside of her work on protozoa Professor Mackinnon wrote a series of articles on children’s games for The Guardian newspaper and combined her love of music with her knowledge of German to translate a book on Beethoven into English.
