We are sad to learn that Professor Emeritus Professor Margaret Matthews died on Monday in Shrewsbury Royal Hospital after a short illness. We extend our condolences to her family and friends.
Professor Margaret Matthews joined the Department of Human Anatomy as a Departmental Demonstrator in 1957 to undertake teaching in the dissecting room and embryology and neuroanatomy classes, and research alongside senior colleagues in the Department. Her research explored the extent of shrinkage of nerve cells in the brain after deprivation of their normal inputs. She was one of only two female demonstrators in the Anatomy department at the time.
In 1971, Professor Matthews was appointed University Lecturer, only the third woman to be employed in this position in the Department of Human Anatomy. With this position, her teaching responsibilities increased to provide classes in Histology and Neuroanatomy for physiology and psychology students. Also in 1971, she was elected to a Fellowship at Lady Margaret Hall, where she had been tutoring in anatomy since 1958.
With the advent of electron microscopy in the 1960s, Professor Matthews shifted her focus to the autonomic system of nerve cells outside the brain, because these were capable of regenerating their axons (output fibres), unlike the nerve cells of the brain, enabling her to study their response to injury. She began looking at the neurones of sympathetic ganglia and their responses to the cutting of their axons. Her research opened up new fields of study leading to further investigations.
In 1987, Professor Matthews was elected to Honorary Membership of the American Association of Anatomists in their centenary year and in 1997, she was conferred the title of Professor of Human Anatomy in the second year of Oxford’s Titular Professorships scheme. She retired in 1999.
Read more about Professor Matthews here https://www.dpag.ox.ac.uk/women-in-physiology-anatomy-genetics/margaret-matthews