13 Facts About Margaret Billingham

Margaret E Billingham was a pathologist at Stanford University Medical Center, who made significant achievements in the early recognition and grading of transplant rejection following cardiac transplantation, known as 'Billingham's Criteria'.

Margaret Billingham described chronic rejection and techniques in heart endomyocardial biopsy.

Margaret Billingham settled in the United States with her husband, who was a doctor, and their two children, and died there in 2009.

Margaret Billingham's father was posted as a British diplomat, to Tanzania.

Margaret Billingham was then born in 1930 in Tanga, Tanzania, and then educated at Loreto School in Kenya.

Margaret Billingham met her future husband John Billingham while they were both doing their junior house posts.

Margaret Billingham's husband became chief of the life sciences division at Ames Research Center.

In 1966, Margaret Billingham started a 2-year postdoctoral researcher at Stanford.

Margaret Billingham worked closely with Philip Caves at Norman Shumway's cardiac transplantation unit, where they developed the technique for assessing and monitoring acute organ rejection following heart transplant surgery.

Margaret Billingham was at Stanford at a time when Stanford was leading cardiac transplantation research on an international platform and when places like Stanford had relatively few leading female scientists.

Margaret Billingham's work led her to be known as 'founder of cardiac transplantation pathology'.

Margaret Billingham became a fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists, American College of Cardiology and the American College of Pathology.

Margaret Billingham was frequently invited to speak at many National Institutes of Health symposiums and been advisor to them.