Pauline Harrison
# Pauline Harrison

Pauline May Harrison (née Cowan) (born 24 August 1926) is a British protein crystallographer and professor emeritus at the University of Sheffield. She gained her chemistry degree from Somerville College, Oxford in 1948, followed by a DPhil in X-ray crystallography in 1952 supervised by Dorothy Hodgkin. After 3 years at King's College London (contemporary with Rosalind Franklin) she moved to the University of Sheffield in 1955 as a demonstrator in the Biochemistry department (now Molecular Biology and Biotechnology), obtaining an MRC grant to study the iron storage protein Ferritin, publishing preliminary X-ray diffraction data in the 1st volume of the Journal of Molecular Biology in 1959. The molecule which became her life's work. In 1978, she was awarded a personal chair and retired in 1991. In 2001 she was appointed a CBE for services to higher education.

## Personal life

Harrison is the daughter of botanists Adeline May Organe and John Macqueen Cowan, Assistant Keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh. She was married to Royden Harrison, also a lecturer at Sheffield and a figure in the Labour movement until his death in 2002. Harrison is an alumna of St. Trinnean's School.

