Stewart, Alice (1906–2002)

British epidemiologist. Born Alice Mary Naish, Oct 4, 1906, in Sheffield, England; died June 23, 2002, in Oxford, England; dau. of Albert Ernest Naish (an internist) and Lucy Wellburn Naish (physician); attended Cambridge and London universities; m. Ludovick Stewart (div. 1950); children: 2, including Anne Marshall (physician).

Scientist condemned by government and the medical community for much of her career, who proved the link between prenatal X-rays and childhood cancers, contradicting the professed safety of low-dose radiation and challenging an establishment which wished time and again that she would just go away; qualified as a doctor (1931); began work at Oxford University's Department of Social Medicine (1945); was the 1st woman elected to both the Association of Physicians and Royal College of Physicians (1947); published Oxford Survey of Childhood Cancers (1958); officially retired from Oxford University and became research fellow at University of Birmingham (1974); with Mancuso and Kneale, published results of their mortality study of US nuclear workers at Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State in Health Physics (1977), concluding that "Hanford workers were dying of cancer from cumulative radiation exposures far below the standards established as safe"; ostracized by the medical and scientific community (1970s); studied with Kneale the effects of radiation on Japanese atom-bomb survivors (1988); testified before US Senate and House committee hearings, warning of flaws in Department of Energy's standards for assessing radiation hazards (1988, 1989); resumed study of Hanford data (1990); though it was thanks to her research and perseverance that the dangerous practice of administering pelvic X-rays to pregnant women stopped in late 1970s, received little professional reward for preventing leukemia and other cancers resulting from exposure to low levels of radiation. Received Right Livelihood Prize (1986); received the Ramazzini Prize for epidemiology (1991).

See also Gayle Greene, The Woman Who Knew Too Much: Alice Stewart and the Secrets of Radiation (U. of Michigan Press, 1999); and Women in World History.