Stewart, Alice M. (Alice Mary), 1906-2002

Physician. Born Alice Mary Nash, Sheffield, England, 1906. Married Ludovick Stewart in 1933. Died June 23, 2002, Oxford, England. First to demonstrate the damaging effects of radiation on the fetus.

In 1984, Rudi Nussbaum, professor of physics at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, invited Dr. Alice M. Stewart, British physician and epidemiologist, for a sabbatical at Portland State University. Dr. Stewart was born Alice Mary Naish in Sheffield, England in 1906. Her mother, Lucy Well burn Naish, was one of the first British women to become a doctor. She received her medical degree from the University of Cambridge. Dr. Stewart was the first to demonstrate the link between X-rays of pregnant women and disease in their children. She found that children of mothers who had an X-ray of their abdomen to determine the position of their babies were almost twice as likely to have cancer as other children. Dr. Stewart warned that low-dose radiation was more dangerous than physicians acknowledged, and as a result, physicians no longer x-ray pregnant women.

Dr. Stewart was an outstanding scientist with more than 400 peer-reviewed papers. She took courageous stands on public issues regarding damages wrought by exposure to radiation and argued that data on Hiroshima survivors, which were the main source for standards on the safe levels of radiation exposure, were deeply flawed and underestimated radiation’s harmful effects.

In 1933, Alice married Ludovick Stewart. Their daughter, Anne, was born in 1934 and their son, Hughie, was born in 1937. Alice and Ludovick divorced in 1952, leaving Alice with the custody of the children.

In 1941, Dr. Stewart joined the staff at Oxford University in the first Department of Epidemilogy in Britain. While there, she studied laborers responsible for filling shells with TNT at ammunition plants. Her conclusions that exposure to TNT impaired the body’s ability to form blood led Britain to change its manufacturing techniques. She left Oxford in 1974 and became a research fellow at the University of Birmingham in England.

Dr. Stewart had four grandchildren. Upon turning ninety in 1996 she celebrated the event at her home joined by 135 friends and family. She died on June 23, 2002 at the age of 95 in Oxford, England. Source: The Oregonian (2002 July 4).