astronomy

Sylvia Agnes Sophia Tait

Sylvia Agnes Sophia Tait is a astronomy 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 Sylvia Agnes Sophia Tait rather than just read about it. In short: Sylvia Agnes Sophia Tait (née Wardropper, 8 January 1917 – 28 February 2003, known as Sylvia Simpson from 1941 to 1956) was an English biochemist. She worked with her second husband, James Francis Tait, from 1948 until her death in 2003, a partnership described by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as "one of the most successful examples of husband-wife scientific collaboration".

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

Sylvia Agnes Sophia Tait (née Wardropper, 8 January 1917 – 28 February 2003, known as Sylvia Simpson from 1941 to 1956) was an English biochemist. She worked with her second husband, James Francis Tait, from 1948 until her death in 2003, a partnership described by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as "one of the most successful examples of husband-wife scientific collaboration". Together, they discovered and identified the hormone aldosterone, the last of a series of naturally occurring biologically potent steroid hormones to be isolated and identified between the 1920s to the 1950s, after the androgens, oestrogens, and glucocorticoid hormones. Aldosterone is part of the mechanism that regulates blood pressure, and causes conservation of sodium, secretion of potassium, increased water retention, and increased blood pressure. It is thought to be responsible for 15 per cent of cases of high blood pressure.

Early life Tait was born in Tyumen in Siberia, the daughter of Scottish agronomist and trader James Wardropper and his Russian wife Ludmilla. Her mother had obtained a degree in mathematics from the University of Moscow in the Russian Empire. She returned with her family to the UK in 1920, living in Ealing, and her father became a civil engineer. She was educated at Ealing County School for Girls, specialising in languages. She spoke fluent Russian, and improved her German by spending time with relatives in Germany before the Second World War. She suffered a knee injury playing netball at school, and later underwent three knee replacements. She continued her language studies at King's College, London, and but then moved to University College London and graduated with a degree in zoology in 1939. She married Anthony Simpson, a fellow zoology student at University College London and a pilot with RAF Coastal Command, in 1940. He was killed in Norway in October 1941.

Academic career She started to use her married name, Simpson, and joined the team of Professor J. Z. Young in Oxford around 1941, undertaking scientific research on nerve regeneration. In 1944, she moved to the Courtauld Institute of Biochemistry at Middlesex Hospital Medical School in London, working on synthetic analgesics to replace opiates, in a team that included Peter Claringbould Williams, Edward Charles Dodds and Wilfrid Lawson. She also worked on oestrogens with Williams and A. E. Wilder-Smith, developing expertise in bioassays. She started to work on adrenal steroids with James Francis Tait in 1948, building on work by Ralph Dorfman. They developed techniques to detect adrenal steroids on paper chromatograms using ultraviolet light. They were a part of an international collaboration that discovered a previously unknown biologically active compound, which they called electrocortin. It soon became clear that this was a new hormone, secreted by the mammalian adrenal gland, later renamed aldosterone after its structure was determined. Their collaborators included the eminent Swiss chemist Tadeus Reichstein, who was one of the recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1950 for similar work on cortisol. The discovery was published in Nature in a paper, "Isolation of a highly active mineralocorticoid from beef adrenal extract" in 1952. She married a second time, to James Tait, in September 1956, and adopted her new married surname Tait for professional purposes, causing some confusion. She and her second husband both became Fellows of the Royal Society in 1959. They were the second married couple to become FRSs, after Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and the first married couple to be elected to Fellowship on the same day. The Taits continued to undertake scientific research together, and moved to the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, working with Gregory Pincus. There they worked on adrenal zona glomerulosa cells. They spent some time at the Physiology Department at the University of Melbourne in Australia in about 1960 and at the Howard Florey Institute. They returned to Middlesex Hospital Medical School in 1970, where James Tait became Professor of Physics as Applied to Medicine and they were co-directors of the Biophysical Endocrinology Unit.

Later life The Taits retired in 1982 and moved to East Boldre in the New Forest, but continued scientific research using simulations on using two Apple IIe computers running in parallel. Tait suffered from leg ulcers in her later years, and then developed a heart condition. She died of renal and heart failure at Lymington Hospital in Hampshire, less than two months before a meeting in London in April 2003 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the discovery and identification of aldosterone. Her husband also missed the meeting as he was under treatment for diabetes in Royal Bournemouth Hospital. At the time of her death, she was the most senior woman FRS living in Britain (Martha Vogt, then living in San Diego, was the senior woman fellow). She was also a member of the British Society for Endocrinology, the American Endocrine Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Notes

References Denton, D. A.; I. MacIntyre (1 December 2006). "Sylvia Agnes Sophia Tait. 8 January 1917 -- 28 February 2003: Elected FRS 1959". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 52: 379–399. doi:10.1098/rsbm.2006.0026. ISSN 0080-4606. PMID 18551796. Coghlan, John P; Vinson, Gavin P (2003). "Obituary: Sylvia A S Tait" (PDF). The Endocrinologist (69). Retrieved 26 January 2014. Richmond, Caroline (3 May 2003). "Sylvia Tait". The Lancet. 361 (9368): 1571. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(03)13180-7. S2CID 54337847. "Sylvia Tait". Obituaries. The Telegraph. 26 March 2003. Retrieved 26 January 2014. Wright, Pearce (20 March 2003). "Sylvia Tait: Biochemist who cracked the blood code". Obituaries. The Guardian. Retrieved 26 January 2014. "BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIAL RELATING TO J.F. TAIT FRS (b. 1925) AND S.A.S. TAIT FRS (1917–2003)". The National Archives. Retrieved 26 January 2014. Iain MacIntyre, ‘Tait, Sylvia Agnes Sophia (1917–2003)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Jan 2007; online edn, Jan 2009. Retrieved 25 October 2012.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Sylvia Agnes Sophia Tait

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Sylvia Agnes Sophia Tait claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, 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 Sylvia Agnes Sophia Tait 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 Sylvia Agnes Sophia Tait 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 Sylvia Agnes Sophia Tait

In research: Sylvia Agnes Sophia Tait appears in astronomy 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 Sylvia Agnes Sophia Tait 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: Sylvia Agnes Sophia Tait is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1917 births, 2003 deaths, 20th-century English women scientists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Sylvia Agnes Sophia Tait 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.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “Sylvia Agnes Sophia Tait” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Sylvia Agnes Sophia Tait in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Sylvia Agnes Sophia Tait 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 Sylvia Agnes Sophia Tait out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Sylvia Agnes Sophia Tait in simple terms?

Why does Sylvia Agnes Sophia Tait matter?

Because it connects several astronomy 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 Sylvia Agnes Sophia Tait?

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 Sylvia Agnes Sophia Tait.