Obituary: Sheila Jennett (1926 – 2024)

Born and schooled in Liverpool, only-child Sheila Pope won a scholarship to the city’s University – but only after switching from an all-girls to an all-boys school: the only way to complete the necessary scientific studies at the time. At medical school in the 1940s, she met her future husband and fellow student Bryan Jennett – later world-renowned author of the Glasgow Coma Scale. Thirteen years in clinical practice followed, first as an accomplished General Surgeon and then in Respiratory Medicine with only short gaps as two sons and then a daughter arrived.

As Bryan moved from National Service to a series of posts to gain experience, so she setup home around the country, whist working in no fewer than seven hospitals between Liverpool, Cardiff, Manchester and Glasgow and again always finding herself very much in the minority as a woman. This clinical period included a fondly remembered spell alongside Ludwig Guttman at Stoke Mandeville in the 1950s as he pioneered the Spinal Injuries Unit and establishing the sporting event that grew into the Paralympic Games. A fellowship relocated the whole family to UCLA for a year later in the 50s, with Sheila writing a regular column for the Guardian newspaper back home on the California lifestyle with its new-fangled supermarkets and other novelties relating the Jennett’s life abroad with three children under the age of seven.

Soon after the family settled in Glasgow in the early 1960s, the birth of a third son tempted Sheila towards the (then!) more regular hours of academia. On joining the virtually all-male Physiology Department, she soon produced an MD thesis addressing Drug-induced Respiratory Depression. Later came her 1969 PhD – Hypoxia & Hyperoxia in Man.

Alongside teaching commitments, the 1970s saw the publication of numerous papers, focussing on respiratory and cardiovascular physiology and pathophysiology. She lectured around the world, including the USA, Japan and the Antipodes. Several papers were co-authored with international neurosurgeons who had first travelled to Glasgow to work with her husband, only to find themselves drawn to collaborate with her, extending her work into disorders associated with brain damage. As renowned for her teaching as her research, Sheila was equally well known as a sponsor and mentor for colleagues and PhD students from home and abroad.

Appointed titular Professor in 1978, Jennett progressed into leadership – her promotion again celebrated as a milestone by female peers. Later she released her definitive Human Physiology textbook. Recognised as a fair and progressive Head of Department, she was also in demand as Examiner at the Royal Colleges in Glasgow and London; Kings College, as well as the Universities of Dublin, Belfast and Dundee. Sheila served as Scottish Representative on Home Office committees and was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians & Surgeons in Glasgow in 1983.

After her retirement in 1991, research interests and university links continued. The Oxford Companion to the Body came out under her co-editorship with Colin Blakemore in 2001 – the Churchill Livingstone Dictionary of Sport and Exercise Science and Medicine following in 2008.

A girl-guide and then a walker with the Holiday Fellowship, Sheila was a lifelong explorer at home and abroad. A keen sailor over four decades and founding member of the Serpent Yacht Club, the family spent much of their leisure time on the Scottish West Coast either afloat in a series of six boats (latterly eponymously named Jenne-vive) or at a much-loved holiday home in Lochgoilhead. Always enjoying the wind in her hair, Sheila took the wheel of no fewer than five convertible cars from her forties right through to her eighties. Along with a love of writing, Sheila Jennett was both a passionate, accomplished musician and a prolific artist: creative hobbies which inspired and live on in the interests and professions of her daughter, three sons, eight grandchildren and a further eight great-grandchildren.