Jean Youatt facts for kids

Jean Beatrice Youatt (born March 13, 1925 – died September 20, 2017) was an Australian scientist. She was a biochemist, which means she studied the chemistry of living things.

Early Life and Interest in Science

Jean Youatt was born in China in 1925. Her parents were missionaries, helping people in other countries. Her father was from Australia, and her mother was from Britain.

Jean's family visited Australia many times. They lived there from 1929 to 1937. Because they traveled a lot, Jean went to many different schools.

When she was about seven or eight years old, Jean became very interested in science. Someone from the Victorian museum taught her about fossils. Her parents always encouraged her to learn more about science.

Her schooling was stopped in 1941. This happened when her family was held in a camp in China during World War II.

Education and Research

Jean went to the University of Melbourne in Australia. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in 1949. She studied chemistry and microbiology. Microbiology is the study of very tiny living things, like bacteria.

She then earned her master's degree in microbiology at the same university. She worked with a scientist named Vic Skerman. They studied how oxygen affected tiny living things called anaerobes.

At that time, Jean could not get a Ph.D. in Australia. So, she traveled to the United Kingdom. She studied at Leeds University. She finished her Ph.D. in 1954. Her research was about a special organism that could break down a chemical called thiocyanate.

Career and Discoveries

Jean started working at Monash University in 1962. She was a chemistry lecturer there. She continued her work until she retired in 1990.

Early in her career, Jean studied a medicine for tuberculosis. This medicine was called isoniazid. She wanted to understand how it worked in the body.

In 1968, she visited Seattle in the United States. She went to a big meeting about plants called the International Botany Congress. There, she learned about a type of fungi called allomyces.

Jean became very interested in allomyces fungi. She spent most of her later research studying them. She wanted to know how the chemicals around the fungi affected their growth.

She made some important discoveries about how fungi cells grow. She published 41 scientific papers. Other scientists have used her work in their own research many times.

Even after she retired in 1990, Jean kept helping at Monash University. She worked in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.