Winifred Cullis

Winifred Cullis (2 June 1875 – 13 November 1956) was a physiologist and academic, and the first woman to hold a professorial chair at a medical school.

Early life and education

Born in Gloucester, Winifred was the youngest daughter of the six children of Frederick John and Louisa (née Corbett) Cullis. Her brother Cuthbert Edmund Cullis became a mathematician. The family moved to Birmingham in 1880. She was initially educated at a middle school, the Summer Hill School, and at 16 transferred to the associated King Edward VI High School for Girls, Birmingham and took extra science classes at Mason College.

She entered Newnham College, Cambridge in 1896, financed by a Sidgwick scholarship, and achieved a second in both parts of the natural sciences tripos (1899 and 1900). While an undergraduate student she was supervised in the Physiological Laboratory by John Newport Langley. In 1912 she obtained a full-time post as lecturer and head of department, with the title as university reader in physiology. In 1916 she spent a year on secondment at the University of Toronto as the acting professor of physiology. She finally became a professor of physiology at the University of London in 1919 and the named Sophia Jex-Blake chair of physiology in 1926. She was the second woman in the UK to be appointed to a chair at a British university-level institution. She retired as professor emeritus in 1941.

In 1915 Cullis was one of the first five women elected as members of the Physiological Society and served on the society's committee from 1918 to 1925. She also presided at the 1920 society meeting.

While working with T G Brodie, her physiological research focused on the mechanisms of secretion of urine and of gas exchanges in the heart and intestine. With time, her interests changed to considering healthy living in people such as through sports science and effects of fatigue on factory workers. WC Cullis (1906) On secretion in the frog's kidney. Journal of Physiology 34 250–266

Science outreach She gave many talks and other presentations for science outreach. These included:

In 1919 she gave lectures to military personnel stationed in Gibraltar and Malta at the request of the Colonial Office.

In 1931 she gave support to a public subscription for building a ward in the new Royal Free Hospital to be named in memory of Mary Scharlieb.

In the 1930s she toured the world extensively promoting higher education for women and also promoted adult education via radio shows.

During and after the Second World War she gave many lectures about Britain in wartime. In 1940–41 she gave these in China, Japan, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, Australia, New Zealand, and the USA. She was based in New York in the USA from 1941 to 1943 as Director of the women's section of the British information services and moved to the Middle East in 1944–5 to lecture to the Royal Air Force. The International Federation of University Women has an award in her honour.

Cullis was a member of a large number of committees in the later part of her career. These included the clinical management committee of the Institute of Child Psychology, the council of the National Institute of Industrial Psychology and the Home Office committee on the two-shift system for women and young persons, the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the Trades Union Congress committee on scientific planning of industry, the Central Council of Recreative Physical Training, the King Edward VII Hospital Fund, the BBC Council for Adult Education, and the governing bodies of the Royal Academy of Dancing and Chelsea Polytechnic. She was chairman of the British Film Institute's educational panel, and from 1951 until her death, deputy chair of the English-Speaking Union. She was also a director of the Time and Tide magazine.