Lady Julia Bodmer
Julia Bodmer was a key figure in the discovery and definition of the system of inherited differences between individuals that is responsible for graft rejection. This complex genetical system, now called HLA, was subsequently shown to be an integral part of the machinery that controls the body's immune response to infections, as well as susceptibility to the diseases, called autoimmune, which arise when the immune system mistakenly attacks the body's own tissues. She was much loved by the worldwide community of scientists in her field, who appreciated her warm personality, insight, help and generosity in the provision of advice and reagents. The latter, for example, contribute significantly to many of the current programmes for vaccination against HIV and for the development of immune treatments of cancer, the disease that eventually defeated her. All this she achieved while bringing up three children, all now successful in their chosen professions, and in an age when this was much less common than it is now, and with minimal help in the home. There could be no better contradiction of the view that, for a woman it is not possible to combine a successful family life with an outstandingly productive scientific career.
A special feature of Julia Bodmer's work was her involvement in international collaborations, especially the workshops, which over a period of more than 35 years have laid the basis of the HLA system. She also played a crucial role over many years in the establishment of an internationally accepted nomenclature which has been essential for the clinical and research applications of the system. She was a founder of EFI, The European Federation for lmmunogenetics, which has established an excellent rapport between European countries in this key field, largely due to her friendly but firm persistence in bringing people together.
Born in Manchester in 1934, Julia Bodmer went to the Manchester High School for Girls where she excelled academically, especially in languages, and became Head Prefect. Having won a State scholarship, without which in those days before grants or loans for students her parents could not have afforded to send her away to University, she went to Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, to read Politics Philosophy and Economics, specialising in her final year in economics and statistics. Having married her husband, Walter, subsequently her life long partner at home and at work, immediately after graduating, she moved to Cambridge where he was to do his Ph.D. There she obtained a position as statistical assistant to the noted economist, W. B. Reddaway, in the Department of Applied Economics where he was Director. The birth of her first two children and a move with her husband to Stanford University, in 1961, interrupted what might have become a notable career in economics. However, soon after moving there when her third child was hardly more than a month old, she became once again restless just staying at home and sought new intellectual challenges. The answer was to use her statistical expertise in a totally new field, working with her husband and the late Rose Payne on the analysis of data on the just emerging tissue types, which became the basis of the HLA system. She often reminded her husband that her first few months were without pay until a new research grant came to the rescue. Computers were then, in 1963, a novelty in medical research, but the facilities at Stanford University were excellent. In her first simple computer programme Julia Bodmer identified two new tissue types and laid the basis of the later definition of the first two genes of the soon to become enormously complex HLA genetic system. She subsequently identified many new types and characterised their distribution in different populations, including a pioneering field trip to central Africa, making use of her particular skills in the storage, analysis and interpretation of the data. She was, in other words, a real pioneer in the now popular and justifiably fashionable area of Bioinformatics.
Her move to the new Genetics laboratory in the University of Oxford in 1970 led to a promotion and the opportunity to add the study of the association between HLA types and disease to her research interests. There she took on a major responsibility for the organisation of the international collaborative workshops, especially the one in Oxford in 1977, which defined a major new set of genes in the HLA system crucial to the understanding of the nature of the immune response. These studies also helped establish the association between Juvenile Onset Diabetes and Rheumatoid Arthritis and HLA types, and so the essentially immune basis of these diseases. A further move to the Imperial Cancer Research Fund laboratories in London in 1979, where her husband became the Director, finally gave her an established professorial position with her own laboratory. At the same time having, through her unusual route into science, not acquired the conventional Ph.D. and so title of doctor, she was awarded a D.Sc. by Oxford University. In London she took on the challenge of the new technologies of monoclonal antibodies and recombinant DNA technology and made major further contributions to the characterisation of HLA types and their identification at the DNA level. She also continued her studies of the genetics of diseases, including especially Hodgkins Disease and Testicular cancer.
After her formal retirement from the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, in 1996, she again joined forces with her husband in founding a new ICRF supported laboratory there. She continued actively in her scientific work as a consultant, emphasising her interest in the study of genetic variation in Human Populations and the need for new techniques for high throughput genetic typing, until shortly before she died. In Oxford, she added to her responsibilities through the fact that her husband had become the Principal of Hertford College. Though health problems prevented her from playing as full a part in college activities as she would have liked, her good humour and directness quickly endeared her to Fellows, staff and students alike.
Julia Bodmer's work was characterised by a refreshing directness and simplicity. Her personal qualities particularly endeared her to the many scientists whose careers she helped to form. She would often reveal her much appreciated wit in her public presentations and, given her ability to explain science clearly to the uninitiated, was often called on to talk to the volunteer workers of the ICRF. From time to time she would express her wry humour in poems written while sitting in the back row of a lecture theatre listening to an especially dull talk. In response to a Xmas wish list from the New Scientist in 1986 her poem finished by saying
So father Christmas have you pray
A billion pounds to spare?
Then all together we could lay
The Human Genome bare.
A billion pounds to spare?
Then all together we could lay
The Human Genome bare.
She lived just long enough to see that prediction come true and at a cost that was about right in current terms. She particularly decried the decline in the quality of written English from her younger colleagues. She was a quiet but firm supporter of the woman's cause, but had little sympathy for those who gave up too easily, sometimes perhaps in the face of an unsupportive partner, to the call of family and home. She was incensed that the Oxford and Cambridge club would not until recently admit women in their own right, having been at both universities. However as soon as they changed their policy she became one of the first full women members.
She was honoured by the Medical Profession for her scientific contributions relatively late in her career, becoming last year both an Honorary Fellow of The Royal College of Physicians and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. She enjoyed a lifelong and loving partnership with her husband, both at home and at work. They met when she was 17 and were married for more than 44 years. Her support as a mother undoubtedly contributed to the success of her children's careers, respectively, in the Biotechnology industry, in medical research and as a consultant physician.
Walter Bodmer, 2' February 2001.