Norma Ford Walker
Norma Ford Walker Toronto Hospital for Sick Children | |
|---|---|
| Thesis | A Comparative Study of the Abdominal Musculature of Orthopteroid Insects (1923) |
| Doctoral advisor | Edmund Murton Walker |
| Doctoral students | Irene Uchida |
Norma Ford Walker (September 3, 1893 – August 9, 1968) was a Canadian scientist who pioneered the development of
Toronto Hospital for Sick Children.[2] She was a strong advocate for women in science, and supervised many women would later become the first appointed department heads of human genetics at many Canadian universities.[2] Her academic career spanned six decades and she published prolifically in both human genetics and entomology. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada
in 1958.
Life and work
Norma Henrietta Carswell Ford was born September 3, 1893, at
St Thomas, Ontario to Norman W. Ford and Margaret Henrietta Dyke[3]
She entered into a BA degree at the University of Toronto in 1914 and completed her PhD in zoology there in 1923, under the supervision of Edmund Murton Walker.[4] In the late 1910s, prior to completing her PhD, she taught biology classes for women and throughout the 1920s she would give lectures on biology, health, and human genetics to various women's groups including the Girl Guides.[2]
Her early work was in
In 1937, she was co-Dionne Quintuplets were truly genetically identical,[9]
and left entomology behind. In 1943, she married Edmund Walker.
Between 1937 and her death she made many valuable contributions to the study of human genetics, and became a globally-renowned expert on multiple births. She was the first person to apply dermatoglyphics in the diagnosis of Down syndrome.[10]
She taught Oliver Smithies genetics in her lab[11] and with him, demonstrated that haptoglobin types were inherited[12][13]
In 1966, she was awarded an honorary degree from
Queen's University, Kingston
for her scientific achievements.
References
- doi:10.1139/g08-915.
- ^ PMID 12400056.
- ^ ""Ontario Births, 1869-1912," database with images". FamilySearch.
- PMID 4935304.
- JSTOR 3271857.
- JSTOR 3271610.
- S2CID 84997483.
- ^ Ford, Norma. A comparative study of the abdominal musculature of orthopteroid insects (PhD Dissertation ed.). University of Toronto.
- ^ MacArthur, J.; Ford, N. Blatz, WE (ed.). "A biological study of the Dionne quintuplets: an identical set". Collected studies on the Dionne quintuplets. University of Toronto Press: 3–49.
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires|journal=(help) - PMID 13377275.
- ISBN 9789814555210.
- S2CID 4255149.
- S2CID 2308929.