Francis Marshall

Francis Hugh Adam Marshall CBE FRS FRSE LLD (11 July 1878 – 5 February 1949]]) was a British physiologist who did pioneering early research into the physiology and endocrinology of biological reproduction. Early life and education Marshall was born in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, the son of Thomas Marshall and Mary née Lucas. He was educated at St Mark's School in Windsor then Southborough School in Tunbridge Wells. He studied at University College, London, and then at the University of Cambridge, graduating from Christ's College in 1900. He did further postgraduate studies at the University of Edinburgh, gaining his first doctorate (DSc). Career and research Marshall's first position was a research assistant to James Cossar Ewart in Edinburgh, assisting Ewart's work on the now-discredited theory of telegony. He also began his research on reproduction, studying the reproductive cycle of sheep at Ewart's Penicuik farm; this work resulted in his first significant research paper in 1903. He subsequently studied the oestrus cycle of ferrets (with Edward Schäfer) and dogs (with William A. Jolly). Marshall began to study the function of the ovary, publishing a classic paper with Jolly subtitled "The ovary as an organ of internal secretion" in 1905 that Alan S. Parkes described as "the first serious attempt to correlate the changes in the uterus during the reproductive cycle with the cyclic production of different internal secretions by the ovary." From 1903 to 1908, Marshall lectured at the University of Edinburgh in Natural History. His presence at the university is cited as one of the reasons that the Institute of Animal Genetics was established there in the 1910s.