Margaret Becklake

Margaret Rigsby Becklake (27 May 1922 – 17 October 2018) was a South African–Canadian physician, respiratory physiologist and epidemiologist whose research helped establish chronic airways disease (now categorized under chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) as an occupational lung disease caused by dust exposure, notably in mining and other industries. She was a longtime professor at McGill University who played a leading role in building research capacity in respiratory epidemiology in Canada, South Africa and internationally. She was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in 2007 and a Grand Officer of the National Order of Quebec in 2011.

Early life and education Becklake was born in London, England, on 27 May 1922, and moved in infancy to South Africa, where she was raised in Pretoria.

Career South Africa (1940s–1957) After internship and training in the UK, Becklake returned to Wits as a junior lecturer and, in 1954, became a physiologist at the Miners' Pneumoconiosis Bureau in Johannesburg, where she established a lung function laboratory. When McGill University offered McGregor a post, the couple emigrated to Montreal with their two young children in 1957. As one of the first women specialists in both epidemiology and respiratory medicine, she had broken significant barriers in these fields.

She died in Montreal on 17 October 2018, aged 96.

Legacy Becklake is widely credited with helping to define occupational chronic airways disease as a distinct medical condition and with training and mentoring generations of clinicians and researchers in respiratory epidemiology. In 2018, the Montreal Chest Institute Foundation established the Margaret Becklake Fellowship in Respiratory Research to support trainees from low- and middle-income countries and from Indigenous communities.