Esther Killick

Esther Margaret Killick (3 May 1902 – 31 May 1960) was an English physiologist who was a professor of physiology at the London School of Medicine for Women (Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine) from 1941 until her death in 1960. Her main research interests lay in respiratory physiology and carbon monoxide poisoning.

Early life and education Killick was born on 3 May 1902 in Ilford to Arthur Killick and Henrietta Fanny (née Moulton). She attended Leeds Girls' High School and went on to study at the University of Leeds, earning a BSc with honours in physiology followed by an MB ChB in 1929. She later received an MSc (1937) and DSc (1952) from Leeds.

Career Killick worked in the physiology department of the University of Leeds from 1929 to 1931, as an investigator to the Safety in Mines Research Board. During this period she studied carbon monoxide poisoning and acclimatisation, and collaborated with John Scott Haldane from the University of Birmingham. In 1935, she was appointed lecturer in industrial medicine at the University of Birmingham. Killick moved to London in 1939 with an appointment as lecturer in applied physiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. In 1941, she was appointed to the Sophia Jex-Blake chair of physiology London School of Medicine for Women (renamed the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine in 1947), where she spent the remainder of her career. Similarly, in 1940 Killick recognized heme degradation products (pseudohemoglobin) correlate with continued presence of carbon monoxide in the blood of patients recovering from carbon monoxide poisoning, the observation is a trace origin for endogenous carbon monoxide produced via catabolism of heme by heme oxygenase.

Personal life Killick married Arthur St George Huggett, a physiologist, in 1938. They had two daughters, Margaret (b. 1945) and Jean (b. 1940). She died in London's National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery on 31 May 1960, aged 58, from a cerebral haemorrhage.