Alison Brading

Education and early life Alison Brading was born in Bexhill-on-Sea and educated at The Maynard School, Exeter, where she excelled academically and in sport, winning the Victor ludorum. While visiting her parents in Nigeria as a teenager, she acquired poliomyelitis, the side effects of which she lived with throughout her life. She was only saved by an iron lung, introduced to Nigeria by her father Brigadier Norman Brading. from the acute phase of her illness meant that she was unable to accept a position to study Medicine at the University of Oxford. Instead, she studies zoology at the University of Bristol, graduating with a 1st class honours degree. She continued in Bristol, gaining a PhD exploring the function of muscle in the tapeworm (Ascaris lumbricoides), under the supervision of Peter Caldwell.

Research and career In 1965, she moved to the University of Oxford to work with Edith Bülbring, being appointed as fellow and tutor in physiology at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford in 1968, lecturer in pharmacology in 1972 and a professor in 1996.

Role in training and education In the laboratory, Professor Brading was instrumental in training a generation of urological surgeons in laboratory techniques, and also inspired basic science research. She was particularly proud of her contributions to the study of smooth muscle in Japan, where three of her former DPhil students, postdoctoral researchers or fellows subsequently became professorial heads of department (including Hikaru Hashitani (Nagoya) and Noriyoshi Teramoto (Saga)).

Awards and honours In 2006, she was awarded the St Peter's Medal of the British Association of Urological Surgeons. She was awarded the title of honorary member of the Physiological Society (2008) and honorary Fellowship of the British Pharmacological Society. Autonomic Nervous System and Its Effectors

Personal life In her later life she lived next to the canal in Thrupp, Oxfordshire, where she captained her own narrowboat, assisted by family, friends and colleagues.

Alison developed post-polio syndrome meant that she had trouble standing unaided and had breathing problems that progressed as she aged. While still active in scientific research, she acquired pneumonia in September 2010, which, through many months in hospital, she unable to conquer, arguable due to her ongoing post-polio syndrome weakness. As a biographer wrote,