Mary Lyon

Mary Frances Lyon FRS (15 May 1925 – 25 December 2014) was an English geneticist, who is best known for her discovery of X-chromosome inactivation, an important biological phenomenon.

Childhood and education

Mary Lyon was born on 15 May 1925 in Norwich, England as the eldest out of three children of a civil servant and a schoolteacher. She was educated at a grammar school in Birmingham. During that time, she said, she became interested in science thanks to a good schoolteacher and nature books she won in an essay competition. During the second world war, she pursued her studies at Girton College, Cambridge at the University of Cambridge, where she read zoology, physiology, organic chemistry and biochemistry, with zoology as her main subject. At this time, only 500 female students were allowed to study at the university, in contrast to more than 5,000 men. Furthermore, the woman received only a “titular” degree, despite attending the lectures with men, taking the same practical courses and passing the same exams as the men. During that time she became interested in embryology. She went on to do her PhD with R A Fisher, who was Professor of Genetics in Cambridge, where she characterized a mutant mice strain with a 'pallid' mutation and published the research. During the course of her PhD she moved to Edinburgh.

Awards and honours

• In 1973 Mary Lyon was elected Fellow of the Royal Society.
• In 1979 she became Foreign Associate of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
• In 1984 she won the Royal Medal of the Royal Society.
• In 1994 she won the Mauro Baschirotto Award in Human Genetics.
• In 1997 she was awarded the Wolf Prize in Medicine.
• In 1997 she also received the Amory Prize.
• In 2004 she was awarded the March of Dimes Prize in Developmental Biology.
• In 2006 she received the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize.
• In 2006 she was awarded the Rosenstiel Award, jointly with Davor Solter and Azim Surani.