Deborah Doniach

Deborah Doniach ( born April 6, 1912 in Geneva, † 1 January 2004, London) was a British-Swiss physician and immunologist. She was a pioneer in the field of autoimmune disease.

Life and work

Doniach was the daughter of concert pianist Joseph Niswitzki, accompanied, among others, Joseph Szigeti, and went to school in Paris ( Lycée Molière ). She studied medicine at the Sorbonne. After her marriage to Sonny Doniach (later pathology professor at the London Hospital ), she continued her studies in London at the Royal Free Medial School. After that, she worked in the department chemical pathology and then in endocrinology at the Middlesex Hospital in London. In the mid- 1960s, the Department of Immunology was founded, she moved there and was one of the first consultative immune pathologists in the UK (Consultant Immunopathologist ) and from 1974 professor of clinical immunology.

She recognized the character of Hashimoto 's thyroiditis as an autoimmune disease. With simultaneous research by Ivan Roitt and Peter Campbell at the Middlesex Hospital, this led to the discovery of organ-specific autoimmune diseases ( The Lancet 1956). In collaboration with Roitt they also explored Pernicious anemia as an autoimmune disease ( inflammation of the stomach ) and she recognized the autoimmune character of other diseases such as type I diabetes and primary biliary cirrhosis.

In 1964 she received the Canada Gairdner International Award.

The marriage produced a son (Sebastian Doniach, professor of physics at Stanford University), and a daughter were born.

Writings

• Peter Campbell, Deborah Doniach, R. Vaughan Hudson, Ivan Roitt Auto- antibodies in Hashimoto 's disease ( lymphadenoid goitre ), The Lancet, Volume 271, 1956, pp. 820-821
• Doniach, Vaughan Hudson, Roitt Human auto- immune thyroiditis: Serological Studies, British Medical Journal, Volume 1, 1960, pp. 365-373, online