Biography of Regina Schoental

Regina Schoental graduated DSc from the University in 1950, and was a leading researcher in the field of biochemistry and toxicology.

Born in Działoszyce, Poland in 1906 to a Jewish banking family, Schoental left Poland in November 1938. When Schoental enrolled at the University of Glasgow in 1943, aged 36, as a Research student of Chemistry, she did not know whether her father, Gershon, was still alive. Her parents perished during the Holocaust.

Schoental held an MChem (1929) and DPhil (1930) from Jagellonian University, Cracow, and continued her research at the university’s Clinical Laboratory for Cancer Research in the 1930s. In England, Schoental worked with Isaac Berenblum, a father of chemical carcinogenesis and in 1945 she moved from Oxford to the chemistry department at the University of Glasgow, where she remained until 1951. She researched in collaboration with Sir James Wilfred Cook, Regius Professor of Chemistry at the University (1939-1955) and the foremost chemist in the study of cancer. Schoental also contributed a chapter on carcinogenesis to Erich Clar's edited volume on Polycyclic hydrocarbons (London : Academic Press, 1964) while he was at Glasgow.

Schoental graduated DSc in on 8 July 1950 with the thesis Synthetic approach to the study of metabolic products of polycyclic hydrocarbons under the supervision of James Norman Davidson, Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Glasgow from 1947-72.

Schoental then joined the the cancer research department at Beatson Memorial Hospital in Glasgow. Her studies of toxic natural products would take her all over the world, from Australia, Asia to Africa, and a spell at the oncology department of the Chicago Medical School. In the mid-1950s she joined the Medical Research Council (MRC) Toxicology Research Unit, Carshalton, Surrey, where she remained until September 1971.

Schoental died in 1995 and is buried in Jerusalem.

Sources

Other Online Resources

• Cancer Research, 1 September 1991, Volume 51, No.17
• Regina Schoental obituary, Anthony S. Travis, Jewish Women's Archive

Printed Materials

• The World Who’s Who of Women. Cambridge, UK, 1998

Summary

Regina Schoental
Born 12 June 1906.
Died 29 January 1995.
GU Degree: DSc, 1950; Science and Engineering,
University Link: Researcher
Occupation categories: biochemists
English snippet: A pioneer in field of biochemistry and toxicology
Record last updated: 9th Apr 2013

Country Associations

Poland, Dziatoszyce
Place of Birth

England, Surrey
Place of Death

Israel, Jerusalem

University Connections

University Roles

• Researcher