Antoinette Pirie

Antoinette Pirie ( Patey; 4 October 1905 – 11 October 1991) was a British biochemist, ophthalmologist, and educator.

Biography Antoinette Patey was born in Bond Street, London. Her father was a botanist and pharmacist. She was educated at Wycombe Abbey School, and then achieved a first-class honours in natural sciences (biochemistry) from Newnham College, Cambridge in 1932. She completed her PhD at the biochemical laboratory in Cambridge under the professorship of Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins. Pirie was dedicated to the study of the eye for the rest of her life.

In 1942, she accompanied Ida Mann to Oxford as her assistant at the formation of the Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology at Oxford. Mann and Pirie researched the problems of ocular development, metabolism and toxicology. In 1946 they collaborated on The Science of Seeing. By 1947 Pirie succeeded Mann, as a Margaret Ogilvie Reader in Ophthalmology, and was elected to a professional fellowship at Somerville College, Oxford. At Oxford she worked with a team on unraveling major eye diseases by studying the biochemical processes of the eye. This led to discoveries with lens metabolism, enzymes, and lens proteins. Her findings accomplished important work on cataracts. Her work with cataracts started after collaborating with Ruth van Heyningen and exploring the biochemical changes in the cataracts of rabbits.