Eileen Southgate

Eileen Southgate is a British biologist who mapped the complete nervous system of the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), together with John White, Nichol Thomson, and Sydney Brenner. The work, done largely by hand-tracing thousands of serial section electron micrographs, was the first complete nervous system map of any animal and it helped establish C. elegans as a model organism. Among other projects carried out as a laboratory assistant at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology (MRC-LMB), Southgate contributed to work on solving the structure of hemoglobin with Max Perutz and John Kendrew,

Career Southgate spent her entire career as a laboratory technician at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology (MRC LMB). She began working there in 1956, at the age of 16, after being given the option by a career officer who came to her school. Southgate carried out additional research on hemoglobin with Vernon Ingram, assisting with his research on sickle cell disease, a genetic disease in which a mutation in hemoglobin causes it to form chains (polymerize) and block blood vessels. When Stretton left for the University of Wisconsin in 1971, Southgate went to work with John White, who was then a PhD student under Sydney Brenner. it is commonly referred to by its running title, "The Mind of a Worm." Southgate retired in 1993.