Sheila Callender

Short abstract

One of the major postwar figures in haematology

Sheila Callender was one of the last of the general physician/haematologists who, on both sides of the Atlantic, did so much to establish and develop haematology after the second world war.

At the Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine in Oxford she made many seminal contributions to the understanding of blood diseases. With Rob Race she was the first to identify the Lutheran and Willis blood groups, was among the first accurately to determine the lifespan of red blood cells, and, with the help of her colleagues in Oxford by building one of the first whole-body counters made a number of extremely important observations about iron absorption and iron overload in a wide variety of diseases.

Sheila also made important contributions to the management of iron overload and to understanding the pathogenesis of the megaloblastic anaemias. And when Professor Leslie Witts became chairman of the Medical Research Council's Leukaemia Trials Committee she played a crucial role in helping him to develop some of the early and extremely successful studies of different drug regimes for the treatment of leukaemia.

Apart from junior hospital posts in Dundee Royal Infirmary and a brief period in St Louis, United States, with Carl Moore as a Rockefeller travelling research fellow, she spent the whole of her career in Oxford. She joined Professor Witts as a house physician in the newly formed Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine in 1942, was appointed May reader in medicine in 1947, and from 1954 was first assistant and later clinical reader.

All her research stemmed from problems that she saw at the bedside and, because of the particular interests of the Nuffield Department, much of her best work was at the interface between haematology and gastroenterology.

In 1955 Sheila married Ivan Monostori, who had come to Oxford as a refugee from Hungary. They established beautiful homes in Oxford and Scotland, where they shared their interests in country life, gardening, fine wine, and, at least to one of their friends, rather terrifying bulldogs.

Sheila Callender, former consultant physician and clinical reader Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Oxford (b Sidcup 1914; q St Andrews 1938; MD, FRCP, DSc), d 17 August 2004.