Dame Honor Bridget Fell, DBE, FRS[1] (22 May 1900 – 22 April 1986) was a British scientist and zoologist.
Later, in 1918, she began her undergraduate study in zoology at the University of Edinburgh, advised by Francis Albert Eley Crew.
Crew recommended Fell as a summer researcher to Cambridge pathologist Thomas Strangeways, who was working in the then-new field of tissue culture.
When Fell graduated in 1922 and found no open scientific positions in Edinburgh, she began work full-time as a research assistant to Strangeways.
[9] Although the laboratory was never well-funded—Fell described the funding situation at one point as "something of a nightmare"[10]: 250 —it developed an international reputation for tissue culture, cell biology, and radiobiology, and attracted large numbers of visiting scientists; in one tabulation, visitors from 32 different countries were recorded.
Fell's skill in networking and administration is widely considered a major contributor to the success of the laboratory.
[1][9] In retirement, Fell became a research worker in the Division of Immunology, Department of Pathology, at the University of Cambridge, in 1970 where she once again took up the immunobiology of rheumatoid disease.
[9] Fell's career began during the early stages of the development of tissue culture as a method for working with living cells.
This enabled scientists to study living differentiated cells in environments that resembled the behaviour of organs in the animal body.
The transition from histological examination of fixed, stained tissues to observation of living cells attracted great enthusiasm when the techniques were first developed, although their utility was somewhat controversial among scientists during the early days.