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Mary Christine Rosenheim née Tebb b. 11 September 1868 St. Pancras, London, England, United Kingdom d. 1953

"At the inaugural meeting of the Biochemical Club in 1911, attendees voted to exclude women from membership. Are there any clues in the Society’s archives, held at the Wellcome Trust Library in London, which might explain why women had initially been excluded, and why this decision was subsequently revoked in October 1912?

An examination of the minute books of meetings for 1911 to 1928 (archival reference SA/BIO/A/3/1) revealed that the draft rules for the new Club had not explicitly debarred women from membership; these allowed for two categories of membership; honorary members, described as ‘men of distinction’, and ordinary members, designated as ‘persons interested’. However, when a letter sent by a Mrs Rosenheim (undoubtedly Mary Christine Rosenheim née Tebb) enquiring about the possibility of membership was raised at the inaugural meeting, those present passed a motion proposed by R. H. A. Plimmer which excluded women from membership, substituting ‘men’ in place of ‘persons’ in the category of ordinary membership.

This state of affairs was soon reversed. Indeed, the minutes of 1912 reveal that communications by women biochemists were conveyed to meetings of the Club, even if women themselves were ineligible for membership. At a special general meeting in October 1912, during which the members voted to change the name from the Biochemical Club to the Biochemical Society, a motion was passed which replaced ‘men’ with ‘persons’. Following the alteration of the rules, the minutes record women reading papers at meetings. In February 1913 the first women were admitted to the Society: Harriette Chick, Ida Smedley and Muriel Wheldale. By 1919, 21 of the 209 members listed in the yearbook were women. In 1927, Ida Smedley became the first woman to Chair the Biochemical Society.

The decision taken by those present at the inaugural meeting of the Biochemical Club to exclude women from membership was in keeping with the responses of other scientific bodies in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first woman was admitted to the Royal Institute of Chemistry in 1892, but this was more a product of oversight than forward thinking: Emily Lloyd applied to sit the entrance exam, a prerequisite for membership, using her initials only. Women first sought admission to the Chemical Society in 1892 but were only admitted as members in 1920; the first woman admitted as a member was biochemist Ida Smedley. The Physiological Society was founded in 1876 but only voted to admit women as members in 1915, following two years of debates on the issue.

Moreover, no women were elected to the Royal Society until 1945 when crystallographer Kathleen Lonsdale and the biochemist Marjory Stephenson were elected Fellows. "

The Cholesterol of the Brain. II. The Presence of “Oxycholesterol” and its Esters in Biochem J. 1914 Feb

Biography
Mary Christine Tebb, Mrs Rosenheim (1868 - 1953)

Christine Tebb was the daughter of William Tebb of Rede Hall, Burstow and was elected Bathurst Scholar of Girton College, Cambridge. In 1890 she was placed in the first class of Part I of the Natural Sciences Tripos and was also rated first class in 1891 in Part II with physiology as her special subject.

She worked in the Physiology Department in Cambridge. With L.E. Shore she presented a communication to the Physiological Society in 1892 on the transformation of maltose to glucose, and this was the subject of a full paper in The Journal of Physiology a year later. She then moved to King's College London under William Dobinson Halliburton, and her next paper in The Journal of Physiology (1898) was from King's on the hydrolysis of glycogen; in 1902 - 1906 there were three papers on collagen, precipitation of proteids by alcohol and cholesterol in the brain. Then Miss Tebb worked in conjunction with Otto Rosenheim to produce four papers on 'protagon', a substance supposedly present in brain tissue, and three communications to the Physiological Society on lipoids in the brain and adrenals.

Chiristine Tebb and Otto Rosenheim married in 1910. Under her married name of 'M.C. Rosenheim', there were four papers in the Biochemical Journal (1914 - 1916) on cholesterol in the brain. In 1917 she gave a communication to the Physiological Society on 'spermine' and she also published a paper in 1924 on this topic with Dudley and O. Rosenheim, which was dated from King's College and the National Institute of Medical Research.

Christine Rosenheim was still working as a physiologist in 1915 when women were first able to join the Physiological Society but she did not join. Both Otto and Christine Rosenheim lived into their eighties. Christine died in 1953 aged eighty five; for the last two years of her life she was nursed by her husband.

Research and romance
Muriel Wheldale married Huia Onsl on research since 1916/17. Such partnerships were far from uncommon. Indeed, so numerous were the marriages between male and female biochemical researchers at Cambridge, that its laboratories ‘Hoppy’s Dating Agency’! Amongst others to wed within their academic departments were Christine Tebb and Otto Rosenheim (1910); Dorothy Moyle and Joseph Needham (1924) and Gowland Hopkins’s own daughter Barbara and Eric Holmes (1928). https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/chm/people_muriel_wheldale

Bio
Miss M. C. Tebb, London. Mary Christine Tebb later Rosenheim (1868-1953) read physiology at Girton College, Cambridge. Like Marion Greenwood, she was not awarded a degree. She worked in Cambridge and later at King’s College London, where she met and married a German physiologist, Sigmund Otto Rosenheim. She published a paper on the hydrolysis of glycogen in the same year as the Congress.

Most widely held works by Mary Christine Rosenheim
The cholesterol of the brain by Mary Christine Rosenheim - published in 1914

Reticulin and collagen by Mary Christine Rosenheim - published in 1902

Chemistry of reticular tissue by Mary Christine Rosenheim - published in 1899

The cholesterol of the brain by Mary Christine Rosenheim - published in 1914 http://www.worldcat.org/identities/np-rosenheim,%20mary%20christine/

Spermine

The Chemical Constitution of Spermine. I. The Isolation of Spermine from Animal Tissues, and the Preparation of its Salts by Harold Ward Dudley, Mary Christine Rosenheim, and Otto Rosenheim in Biochem J. 1924

Personal Life
Christine Tebb was the daughter of William Tebb. She had a sister Florence Joy Tebb who married the famous scientist Professor Walter Frank Raphael Weldon FRS, a brother Dr. William Scott Tebb and another sister Beatrice Hewetson Tebb. Her mother was Mary Elizabeth Scott.

Otto Rosenheim
b. 29 November 1871, d. 7 May 1955


 * Father: Meier Rosenheim (b. 10 October 1832, d. 1894)
 * Mother: Adelheid Rosenheim (b. 23 August 1838, d. 1898)


 * Birth: Otto Rosenheim was born on 29 November 1871 in Würzburg, Germany.
 * Occupation: Otto Rosenheim was a Reader in biochemistry London University.
 * Marriage: He married Mary Christine Tebb in 1910 in Reigate.
 * Death: Otto Rosenheim died on 7 May 1955.

= Sigmungd Otto Orsenhelm, 1871-1955 = Obituary by Harold King Published:01 November 1956Otto Rosenheim was born at Wurzburg in Germany on 29 November in the year 1871. He married Mary Christine Tebb, a daughter of William Tebb of Rede Hall, Burstow, in July 1910, and died in his Hampstead home on 7 May 1955, his wife dying in 1953 in her 85th year. Rosenheim chose the University in his home town of Wurzburg in which to study for his degree of Doctor of Philosophy and he worked under Tafel in Emil Fischer’s laboratory. Part of the course he spent in Bonn and then returned to W urzburg to complete his degree. The title of his thesis was ‘On the oxidation of jfr-hydroxyquinoline’. His examiner was Hantzsch who had succeeded Fischer in the chair of chemistry and Rosenheim was the first student to be examined by Hantzsch. The oral examination was a difficult one, but Rosenheim came through with flying colours. A year’s military service in the horse artillery then followed, Rosenheim being excluded from taking officer rank. He then went to Geneva to work with Graebe and there met Liebermann, Pictet and Kehrmann. He was called up for a m onth’s military training in Germany but asked to be excused as he was finishing his course. He had already made up his mind to leave Germany and go to England, where a cousin had already settled, as antisemitism was abhorrent to him. He wrote to W. H. Perkin at Manchester and told him of his desire and Perkin invited him to come to work at the University. Rosenheim left Switzerland for Germany to settle his affairs and he is recorded as having entered for research in chemistry in Manchester University for the session 1894-1895. In 1896 Rosenheim joined Philip Schidrowitz in practice as analytical and consulting chemists at a laboratory in Chancery Lane in London. Dr Schidrowitz writes of Rosenheim at that time as a modest and pleasant young man much interested in his work especially in that of a scientific character; he was a remarkable craftsman, excelling in glass-blowing, photography and in manipulative procedures. His main interest was, however, in biological chemistry. This last sentence aptly summarizes Rosenheim’s outlook and career; he was a born biochemist and a deeply read student and master of the subject throughout his life.