Secretariat

Honor Anthony, MBChB

We are very sorry to have to let members know of the death, on 14 April 2011, of Dr Honor Anthony, former Lecturer in the Faculty of Medicine.

Dr Anthony graduated in Medicine from Leeds in 1951.  She was appointed as a Research Assistant in the then Department of Experimental Pathology and Cancer Research in 1957, later being made Lecturer.  She worked closely with Professor Harry Green and the two of them co-authored the book An Immunological Approach to Cancer which was published in 1967. At the end of the 1960s, she participated in a large epidemiological study of bladder cancer and as a result was invited to advise on the setting up of similar investigations in this country and Australia. 

With support from the Yorkshire Cancer Research Campaign, Dr Anthony resumed work in the field of cancer immunology in 1971, concentrating on the immunological aspects of lung cancer including lymphocyte populations and cell mediated immunity.  The direction taken by her research led to her transferring to the Department of Immunology in 1977. 

A founder-member of the British Association for Cancer Research and a member of the British Society for Immunology, Dr Anthony was invited to give papers on a number of occasions to these two societies, as well as to a number of other national and international assemblies.  She published papers on both cancer immunology and clinical epidemiology.  For a number of years, she served in a voluntary capacity as one of the medical officers for Wheatfields Hospice in Headingley.

Dr Anthony took early retirement from the University in 1982.  She went on to serve as a Senior Medical Officer in the Toxicology and Environmental Protection and Prevention Division of the Department of Health, and as Medical Secretary to the Independent Committee on Smoking and Health.  In 1986, she joined Dr Jonathan Maberly at the Airedale Allergy Centre as clinical assistant and research co-ordinator.  Their book Allergy: A Practical Guide to Coping was published in 1989 and they were also two of the co-authors of Environmental Medicine in Clinical Practice, published in 1997.  For several years during the 1990s, Dr Anthony took allergy clinics at Airedale General Hospital.

The funeral took place at St John’s Church, Adel, on 20th April.