Pauline Harrison

Pauline May Harrison (née Cowan, 24 August 1926 – 28 May 2024) was a British protein crystallographer and professor emeritus at the University of Sheffield. She gained her chemistry degree from Somerville College, Oxford in 1948, followed by a DPhil in X-ray crystallography in 1952 supervised by Dorothy Hodgkin. After three years at King's College London (contemporary with Rosalind Franklin) she moved to the University of Sheffield in 1955 as a demonstrator in the Biochemistry department (now Molecular Biology and Biotechnology), obtaining an MRC grant to study the iron storage protein Ferritin, publishing preliminary X-ray diffraction data in the 1st volume of the Journal of Molecular Biology in 1959. The molecule which became her life's work. In 1978, she was awarded a personal chair and retired in 1991. In 2001 she was appointed a CBE for services to higher education.