ABSTRACT
Elizabeth Deuchar, who died of cancer in January 1979 at the age of 52, was an embryologist of distinction. After studying Zoology at Oxford she moved in 1948 to the Institute of Animal Genetics in Edinburgh as a Ph.D. student with the late C. H. Waddington. Her earliest papers, published under his influence, were on embryonic induction, a topic to which she returned many times. These studies culminated in 1975 in a book synthesizing many of her ideas (8).
Between 1953 and 1966 she was successively Lecturer and Reader in Embryology at University College London and during this period she acquired an international reputation as a biochemical embryologist. She was largely a selftaught biochemist, not an easy achievement for one brought up in classical zoology. She published an important group of papers (summarized in (1) and (2)) on the uptake of amino acids into the embryo from the yolk proteins, and was probably the leading worker in this field. Following a short collaborative period with Rudolph Weber in Switzerland, she extended her interests to the study of catheptic activity, particularly in relation to regeneration. She had also a special interest in the control mechanisms involved in somite segmentation and together with A. M. C. Burgess published an important paper (3) showing that a transmitted control mechanism was not involved in the formation of amphibian somites, at least after a certain stage of development.
In 1968 she moved to the University of Bristol, and after her marriage in 1972 she transferred to the University of Exeter. In this final period she turned to the challenge of carrying out on early mammalian embryos surgical experiments comparable to the classical ones which have long formed the basis for our understanding of amphibian and avian development. In collaboration with F. M. Parker (5) she devised a most useful technique for studying rat embryos by time-lapse cinematography. She was interested also in the fundamental problem of whether certain drugs brought about their deleterious effects directly on mammalian embryos or whether they interfered via maternal metabolism (9).
Elizabeth Deuchar published over 60 scientific papers and three books, but her influence on the subject went far beyond that. Apart from the fact that she was an inspiring teacher to several generations of undergraduates and Ph.D. students, she was one of those dedicated scientists who quietly organise meetings and seminars, sit on committees and give their time unselfishly to help others.
Elizabeth was a rather shy and retiring person, very much involved in social work. She was deeply religious and at one time resigned her university position to attend a theological college. Her whole life was coloured by a sense of duty to the principles in which she believed.