Joseph Arthur Arkwright facts for kids
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Sir Joseph Arthur Arkwright (born March 22, 1864 – died November 22, 1944) was a British doctor and scientist. He became a bacteriologist, which is a scientist who studies tiny germs called bacteria. From 1906, he worked at the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine, a famous place where scientists studied how to prevent diseases.
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Early Life and School
Joseph Arthur Arkwright was born in Thurlaston, England. He was the youngest of five children. His father, Arthur William Arkwright, was a farmer. Joseph's mother died when he was very young, in 1866. His great-great-grandfather was Richard Arkwright, a famous inventor who created machines for making textiles (cloth).
Joseph went to Wellington College and then to Trinity College, Cambridge. At Cambridge, he studied natural sciences, focusing on zoology (the study of animals). He finished his medical training at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London in 1889.
His Work as a Doctor and Scientist
After becoming a doctor, Joseph Arkwright worked at several hospitals, including St Bartholomew's Hospital. Later, he became a family doctor in Halesowen. However, he developed a severe skin condition called dermatitis, which made it impossible for him to continue working as a general doctor.
In 1906, he joined the Lister Institute. He started as a volunteer and then became an assistant bacteriologist in 1908.
Studying Diseases
Early in his career, he studied how diseases like diphtheria spread in schools. He also looked at different types of germs that cause meningitis.
During the First World War in 1915, he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps, which was the army's medical team. He was sent to Malta. There, he was the scientist in charge of the lab at St George's Hospital. He studied soldiers who had recovered from dysentery (a gut infection) and also blackwater fever.
In 1918, he joined a committee that studied trench fever. This was a disease common among soldiers. Working with other scientists, he showed that the germ causing trench fever was linked to a type of bacteria found in lice.
Important Discoveries
One of his most important discoveries was about how bacteria can change. He noticed that bacteria could appear in two different forms, which he called "R" (rough) and "S" (smooth). These changes affected how the bacteria behaved, especially in diseases like dysentery.
In 1922, he traveled to Cairo with another scientist, Arthur Bacot, to investigate the cause of typhus fever. Sadly, after two months of work, both of them caught the disease. Arthur Bacot died, but Arkwright recovered after being very ill for a long time.
After returning to the Lister Institute, he studied animal diseases, including foot-and-mouth disease. From 1925, he was part of a government committee that studied this disease. He became its chairman in 1931.
He was also a member of important research groups, like the Medical Research Council from 1930 to 1934. He led committees that studied infections in animals, such as Brucella abortus infection and Johne's disease. He also chaired a committee on tuberculosis.
He officially retired from the Lister Institute in 1927. However, he continued to work there as an honorary member. He wrote over fifty scientific papers about bacteria and how the body fights off diseases.
Awards and Recognition
Joseph Arkwright received several important awards for his work. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (FRCP) in 1916. In 1926, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS), which is a very high honor for scientists. In 1937, he was knighted, which means he was given the title "Sir."
He passed away in 1944 in London.
Family Life
In 1893, Joseph Arkwright married Ruth Wilson. They had three daughters, and two of them also became doctors.
