biology

Ingrid Allen

Ingrid Allen is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Ingrid Allen rather than just read about it. In short: Dame Ingrid Victoria Allen (30 June 1932 – 21 April 2020) was a Northern Irish neuropathologist. She was a Professor Emerita of Neuropathology at Queen's University Belfast.

Key takeaways

Ingrid Allen belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Ingrid Allen to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Ingrid Allen from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Dame Ingrid Victoria Allen (30 June 1932 – 21 April 2020) was a Northern Irish neuropathologist. She was a Professor Emerita of Neuropathology at Queen's University Belfast. She is mostly known for her research in pathology, neurodegeneration, neurovirology and demyelinating diseases, such as multiple sclerosis.

Education and early life Allen was born in Belfast in 1932. Her parents were the Reverend Robert Allen and Doris Allen. She attended Ashley Prep Belfast and Cheltenham Ladies College before going on to study medicine at Queen's University Belfast, graduating in 1957.

Career and research Allen established the Regional Neuropathology Service for Northern Ireland in 1972, becoming its first leader. This provided biopsies and autopsies for conditions such as brain tumours, head injuries, brain infections, multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer's disease. She has published over 200 papers, spanning over 60 years. Her work is focused chiefly on multiple sclerosis, viral infections of the nervous system and penetrating head injury. Her research achievements include discovering markers for multiple sclerosis at the cellular and molecular level, research into the role of viruses in multiple sclerosis, the observation that measles virus spreads transneuronally and probably transsynaptically within the nervous system and research into the cellular level response to penetrating head injury. Allen was Vice President of the Royal College of Pathologists from 1993 to 1996, and in 1997 was appointed the first Director for Research and Development for Health and Personal Social Services in Northern Ireland. In this role, she was responsible for developing the research strategy “Research for Health and Wellbeing”, published in 1999. She held this role until 2002. She has also served on the Medical Research Council and on the Joint Medical Advisory Committee of the Higher Education Funding Council for England.

Awards and honours Allen was elected to the Royal Irish Academy in 1993 and elected as one of the founding Fellows of Academy of Medical Sciences in 1998. She was granted an honorary doctorate in Medical Sciences from her alma mater Queen's University Belfast in 2003 before being granted both a CBE in 1993 followed by a DBE in 2001, both for Medical Research. Queen's University Belfast honoured Allen in 2008 with a portrait which hangs in the university's Great Hall - at the time only the third female academic from Queen's to be recognised in this way.

Personal life Allen was an elder in the McCracken Memorial Presbyterian Church in Belfast. She was a member of Christians in Science, the Society of Ordained Scientists and the Thomas Merton Society of Great Britain and Ireland.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Ingrid Allen

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Ingrid Allen claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Ingrid Allen before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Ingrid Allen ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Ingrid Allen

In research: Ingrid Allen appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Ingrid Allen in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Ingrid Allen is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1932 births, 2020 deaths, 20th-century medical doctors from Northern Ireland, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Ingrid Allen outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Ingrid Allen in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Ingrid Allen means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Ingrid Allen out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Ingrid Allen in simple terms?

Dame Ingrid Victoria Allen (30 June 1932 – 21 April 2020) was a Northern Irish neuropathologist. She was a Professor Emerita of Neuropathology at Queen's University Belfast.

Why does Ingrid Allen matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Ingrid Allen?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Ingrid Allen.