Ruth Frances Itzhaki MSc, PhD

Ruth Frances Itzhaki, MSc, PhD, is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Manchester, England, United Kingdom. She was educated at St Paul's Girls' School in Hammersmith, where she was a junior and senior Foundation Scholar. Afterward, she studied for a BSc in physics, then worked for an MSc in Biophysics - being awarded one of the only two studentships then available in that subject - and finally proceeded to a PhD in Biophysics - all London University degrees.

She then moved to Cambridge, working in the University Department of Radiotherapeutics. She held a Beit Memorial Fellowship for Medical Research and the Wheldale-Onslow Memorial Fellowship (and Praelectorship) at Newnham College. Her research topics have been diverse: iron-binding in plasma; effects of ionizing radiation on natural and synthetic macromolecules; chromatin structure (I was the first to use polylysine and a nuclease to investigate this); effects of irradiation on chromatin; carcinogens and chromatin; viruses and neurological disease.