Sheila Callender

Sheila Theodora Elsie Callender (5 April 1914 – 17 August 2004) was a British physician and haematologist. She spent the majority of her career at Oxford University, and has been credited with helping to establish haematology as a distinct medical discipline.

Early life and education Callender was born on 5 April 1914 in Sidcup, Kent, to Thomas Marshall Callender, a general practitioner, and Charlotte Elizabeth Marie Rose (née Hoysted). Her mother and father were of Irish and Scottish descent respectively. She attended secondary school at the Godolphin School in Salisbury. She attended the University of St Andrews from 1932, earning a BSc in 1935 and an MBChB in 1938. Upon her latter graduation, she received a gold medal recognising her as the best student of her year. She graduated with an MD in 1944 for her research on anaemia during pregnancy.

Callender's contributions to haematology included research on iron absorption and the effects and management of iron overload. She studied some of the most common causes of anaemia: iron deficiency, vitamin B12 deficiency, and folate deficiency. She also worked with Rob Race to develop a new method for determining the lifespan of red blood cells, and helped Leslie Witts on early studies of chemotherapy regimens for treating leukaemia. She and her colleagues at Oxford designed one of the first whole-body counters to measure radioactivity within the body.

Personal life Callender married Ivan Gyula Árpád Monostori, a Hungarian refugee studying medicine at Oxford, in 1957; they lived together in Oxford and Scotland with "a collection of rather terrifying mastiffs". Callender died from leukaemia on 17 August 2004 at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.