Julia Bell MA Dubl (1901) MRCS LRCP (1920) MRCP (1926) FRCP (1938)[1] (28 January 1879 – 26 April 1979) was one of the pioneers of eugenics and human genetics.
[2][3] Her early career as a statistical assistant to Karl Pearson (1857–1936) marked the beginning of a lifelong professional association with the Galton Laboratory for National Eugenics (renamed the Department of Human Genetics and Biometry in 1966) at University College London.
[9] Bell's position as Assistant to Karl Pearson was funded by Francis Galton's endowment to University College London to support eugenics research.
[9] Like other women scientists of the period, Bell's early professional life throughout the 1920s was defined by low pay and short-term research contracts.
[7][8] Between 1907 and 1925, Bell was employed intermittently in both the Biometric and Galton Laboratories, both of which sat within the Department of Applied Statistics at UCL under the directorshop of Karl Pearson.
[1] Julia Bell's early output at the Galton Laboratory included co-authoring "A Statistical Study of Oral Temperatures in School Children with Special Reference to Parental, Environmental and Class Differences" in 1914.
[22] Bell's "combination of mathematical training, genetic knowledge and clinical expertise yielded numerous important insights into human inheritance first appearing in the Treasury," Harper noted.
In 1943, Bell co-authored with James Purdon Martin a paper on the link between a form of intellectual disability in children and the X-chromosomes of the parents, with the condition subsequently being named Martin–Bell syndrome.
The following Galton Laboratory publications authored or co-authored by Julia Bell are available on the UCL Modern Genetics Collection on Internet Archive.
The complete set of The Treasury of Human Inheritance including all sections authored or co-authored by Julia Bell is available online at the Wellcome Collection.