May Mellanby, née Tweedy (1882 – 5 March 1978) was an English medical researcher, styled Lady Mellanby after her husband, Edward Mellanby, was knighted in 1937. As well as nutrition research carried out with her husband, she conducted independent research into the physiology of dentition and the causes of dental disease.[1] She recommended a diet high in Vitamin D and low in cereals to help teeth protect themselves against decay.[2]
May Tweedy was born in London, the daughter of George Tweedy, a shipowner and businessman involved in the Russian oil industry, and his wife Rosa. She was educated at Hampstead High School and Bromley High School. She studied at Girton College, Cambridge from 1902 to 1906, gaining the equivalent of a second-class in the Natural Sciences Tripos. From 1906 to 1914 she was a research fellow and then lecturer at Bedford College, University of London. There she worked with John Sydney Edkins (who would later become her brother-in-law) on gastric secretion.[3] In 1914 she married Edward Mellanby, then a lecturer in physiologyatKing's College for Women.[2]
During World War I May Mellanby lectured on physiologyatChelsea Polytechnic and Battersea Polytechnic, and in 1918 she started dental research for the Medical Research Council.[2] She published a series of research papers in the British Medical Journal and the British Dental Journal,[4] some of which were summarized in a chapter of her husband's Nutrition and Disease (1934).[3] She also produced four Special Reports for the MRC.
May Mellanby was awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Sheffield (1933) and the University of Liverpool (1934). In 1935 she and her husband were jointly awarded the Charles Mickle fellowship at Toronto University. She was elected to the Physiological Society in 1956.[3] Some of her papers are held together with those of her husband, at the Wellcome Library,[1] others are held, along with her research collection, by the Royal College of Surgeons of England.[5]
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