Born: 
29/07/1917
Died: 
16/06/2006
Specialty: 
Blood Transfusion
Designatory Letters: 
MB Edin 1939, MRCP Edin 1945, Fellowship 1953, FRCPath 1964

(Contributed by Dr Rae Lyon)

Being in the third generation of a medical family would be enough to incline Jean to Medicine. She attended school and university in Edinburgh where she had time to captain the ladies Fencing Team.

After graduating in 1939 she saw General Practice in Birmingham and Wolverhampton before going on to various junior hospital posts in the Midlands. At this time air-raids were fairly common and she met with many fearsome exposures.

While working at Edenhall Hospital, Musselburgh, near Edinburgh she passed her MRCP examination in 1945 and in 1953 became a Fellow. In 1964 she was awarded FRCPath.

Early in the war Jean married John Grant of Edinburgh and on his return from overseas they settled in Oxford where he was a publisher.

Starting as a Transfusion Officer and then in the Pathology Department, Jean was, in 1947, invited to be Director of the Blood Transfusion Service for the Oxford area which entailed setting up from scratch a service covering an immense area with the work and staff quadrupling over four years. Being interested in producing anti-sera in rabbits, immunisation of human volunteers and the Anti-Globulin Test, she enjoyed the research opportunities provided as well as teaching staff and students. She published some articles and a booklet about the Coombs Test.

In 1972 a traffic accident robbed her of her son, a medical student, and she took early retirement, moving to the Channel Islands to live in Sark where they already had a house. There she was able to engage in her many hobbies and interests, rapidly integrating into the life of the island, being for example the secretary of the Sark Society (for science and history) and also chairman of the examiners for tractor driving, latterly, forming and running the church choir. Her activities were finally curtailed by failing vision and mobility.