https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.131.42

Professor Tilli Tansey,
Emeritus Professor of Medical History & Pharmacology, William Harvey Research Institute, Barts & The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Queen Mary University of London, UK

When The Physiological Society held several scientific meetings each year, Ann Silver was always in a lecture theatre during Communications, always clutching piles of pre-circulated abstracts. Every abstract had to be approved for publication by the Membership and had already been scrutinised by Ann on behalf of The Society. If necessary, she would query statistics, style, and clarity; resolve ambiguities; and seek confirmation that experiments complied with UK legal and ethical requirements and were thus publishable in The Journal of Physiology. During refreshment breaks she would chase up recalcitrant authors for their corrections and signed copyright forms. Back in Cambridge after the meeting she would work with the Publications Office to publish the meeting’s Proceedings. She then started examining submissions for the next Society meeting. In between she reviewed, edited, proofread and contributed substantially to practically everything published by The Society.

Ann Silver was born into a military family in India, a circumstance that bizarrely led to her never having a birth certificate, and when renewing her passport in 1977 she had to unearth several family birth and marriage certificates to prove she was a British citizen. After erratic schooling, disrupted by the Second World War and ill health, she attended the University of Edinburgh and graduated in Physiology in 1953. Heavily influenced there by Catherine Hebb, to whom the anachronistic word “neuroscientist” would now be applied, Ann started a PhD on nerve function in hens, using both histology and neurophysiology to investigate the effects of organophosphorus compounds, identified as anti-acetylcholinesterase agents during the war, and then suspected of causing demyelination. Her first PhD year in Edinburgh was taken up with building the requisite electronic apparatus, nicknamed “Henrietta”, and then she and Henrietta joined Hebb who had moved to the Agricultural Research Council (ARC)’s Institute of Animal Physiology at Babraham, where Ann remained for the rest of her active lab career working on nerve function. Her work contributed to the debates, still current in the 1950s, about the role of acetylcholine in neurotransmission, and to the later “cholinergic hypothesis” of Alzheimer’s Disease. Inter alia, she studied: axonal transport of acetylcholinesterase; iontophoresis of acetylcholine (with Kris Krynević in Babraham and in Montreal); carotid body function (with Tim Biscoe in Babraham); and blood pressure regulation (with Wilhelm Feldberg and Pedro Guertzenstein at Mill Hill). Much of her detailed researches were assembled in a notable monograph, of a type unimaginable today, The Biology of Cholinesterases (Elsevier North Holland, 1974). Written in the evenings and weekends, so as not to interfere with her ARC “day job”, it was frequently known as The Bible, as in the lab where I did my PhD. One reviewer noted: “Silver carefully separates facts from ideas, and her analysis is critical but not destructive… so clearly written it is a pleasure to read” (Collier (1976), The Quarterly Review of Biology 51, 142). Such clear writing was always Ann’s specific objective, and indeed, the repetitive, stultifying nature of the Minutes of one Meetings Secretary of The Physiological Society in particular drove her to versify “whilst never a sin, to use ‘begin’; it’s always an offence, to use ‘commence’”.

From the 1970s onwards Ann became heavily involved in addressing legislative proposals to ban or further regulate animal experimentation amid increasing anti-vivisectionist activity. Within The Physiological Society, elected to the Committee (analogous to today’s Council) in 1978, she served most significantly with Cec Kidd, Bernard Ginsborg and Jim Pascoe as the Legislative Sub-committee; at Babraham she became the Institute’s Information Officer dealing with such matters. The Sub-committee’s work, involving regular meetings and detailed briefings with legislators in both Houses of Parliament (for all of which Ann was obliged to take annual leave by the ARC) and frequent liaison with other national and international scientific societies and the press was onerous, and at times personally risky. The ultimate passing of the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 was regarded as a workable and successful outcome.

In 1985, ARC cutbacks resulted in Ann’s redundancy, her status as a single woman, without a family to support allegedly influencing her fate, and she never again held a formal position. Invited by Robert Comline to work in the Cambridge Physiological Laboratory, she assisted departmental editorial work and gave courses to Part 2 and PhD students on scientific writing. Jonny Goodchild, then of The Society’s editorial staff, remembers visiting her there in later years:

Ann worked in a dingy little office, more like a store room, on the ground floor in the ‘Physiological Laboratory’, which she shared with Horace Barlow, though he had stopped coming in. I went round a few times for one reason or another. When I was made redundant and became a freelance copyeditor, we were down in her office and Ann said she wanted to give me a present. She suggested Hart’s Rules, but I already had a copy so she gave me the Oxford Dictionary for Writers & Editors, which I consult for unusual terms, particularly to check whether to use italics.

After leaving Babraham, Ann became even more heavily involved in The Physiological Society affairs, principally in editorial roles on the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Physiology (now Experimental Physiology), on a newly inaugurated Editorial Committee, acting as formal Ethics Editor for both The Society’s principal journals and increasingly working with The Society’s publications staff and publishers in a variety of official and non-official roles, as Carol Huxley recalls:

I first met Ann in 1987 at my interview for a copyediting job with the Publications Office, then in the Cambridge University Press Printing House. …Before the interview, I had to complete an English test, devised by Ann. It was a physiology-themed piece of text including all the most common grammatical and spelling errors and some of the more widely known and frequently misspelled physiological terms. The errors were liberally sprinkled through the text and one had to be careful to catch them all. That was my introduction to Ann’s facility for writing correct, well-expressed English and her eagle eye for spotting mistakes. Later, after joining the publications team, I often administered the test to applicants for vacant positions. It was a very useful “sieve” for short-listing candidates.

Ann remained a helpful consultant to the Publications Office long after her retirement from the Press Secretary role. She was always ready to answer questions such as the correct way to index “Michael de Burgh Daly” or track down missing author details, by consulting her copiously annotated master copy of The Grey Book. Thornier questions might require some investigation, but she always provided clear reasoned responses that could be incorporated into the journals’ house style guide for future reference.

Her longevity and many senior roles meant that she had an almost unique perspective on, and memory of, The Society. As The Society’s former Honorary Archivist (1986- 2022) I can attest to how helpful she was, in planning Special Interest Group meetings, finding speakers, and she also alerted me to numerous sources and contacts, including an amusing file of complaints and enquiries that she started in the Publications Office, entitled “the Lunatic Fringe”. Former Secretary Tony Angel agrees:

She undertook many roles in The Physiological Society with her usual competence, integrity, and zeal. She was a friend who helped me when I was Meetings Secretary and Committee Secretary, and she had an impish sense of humour… I will sorely miss her’.

Ann Watson of the Publications Office exemplifies that humour:

Ann had been out collecting for charity and had a door opened wide to her by a completely naked man! (‘I think he may have been expecting someone else’, she said, quite deadpan).

‘Oh no!’ I said, ‘Did you scream and run away?’

‘No’ said Ann, ‘l said “I’m collecting for Mencap, would you like to contribute?”’

‘Yes, of course, wait here’ said the man, who closed the door and returned wearing a dressing gown and holding a £5 note.

Structural changes in The Society from the early 2000s onwards, the increasing influence of professional staff and the concomitant decline in roles and responsibilities of Members distressed her, as did changes in the numbers and nature of scientific meetings, but she never allowed these to influence her loyalty to the subject nor to The Society. Her honesty was much appreciated, even by those she disagreed with, as David Eisner, a former Society President acknowledges:

I particularly valued her integrity and straightforward approach to life. There was never any doubt that she was always motivated by wanting to do the best for others. When I was President of The Physiological Society, I could always rely on her to be frank when she disapproved of something that we were doing!

This view is emphasised by Dafydd Walters, former Chairman of The Society’s Executive Committee:

I liked her very much – an intelligent person who always expressed herself clearly and would give accurate information about people and projects… A great supporter of The Society, but never blindly!

References

Dyball, Richard (2023). ‘In memoriam: Ann Silver’ Journal of Physiology at https://physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1113/JP284728

Tansey, E M (2013). ‘Building Henrietta: DIY electrophysiology in the 1950s’ at http://www.histmodbiomed.org/blog/building-henrietta-diy-electrophysiology-1950s.html

Thomas, Richard (interviewer, 2007). ’Ann Silver’ in Today’s neuroscience, tomorrow’s history, (series created by LL Iversen and E M Tansey). 19 videos at http://www.histmodbiomed.org/article/dr-ann-silver.html and on YouTube; transcript at www.histmodbiomed.org/sites/default/files/55970.pdf

Walters D, Rosenberg M (interviewers, 2008). ‘An interview with Ann Silver’ The Physiological Society, transcript at https://static.physoc.org/app/uploads/2019/03/22194444/Ann_Silver.pdf