Oliver Gillie

At a glance

Born 1937-10-31; died 2021-05-15.

Known as: science journalist, journalist, scientist, and science communicator.

Listed as: human.

Who they were

Personal life Gillie was born in North Shields, Northumberland and was the second of three brothers. His father, John Gillie, was a nautical instrument maker and his mother, Ann (née Philipson), studied fine art in Newcastle and Paris. He went to local schools and then graduated with a first-class degree in natural sciences at Edinburgh . He had a strawberry birthmark on his left cheek and neck, which he believed cost him a place at Cambridge University.

Oliver J. Gillie was a British journalist and scientist. He previously served as the medical correspondent for The Sunday Times, and later medical editor for The Independent.

Early life

Educated at: University of Edinburgh.

Education He held a BSc and PhD in genetics , both from Edinburgh University , where he studied at the Institute of Animal Genetics under Conrad H. Waddington . [ 1 ] His PhD thesis was "Growth and genetic control of enzyme level in Neurospora". [ 2 ] After his PhD he won a Fulbright scholarship to Stanford in California . ^ "The Author - Sunlight Robbery" . Health Research Forum . Retrieved 11 October 2019 . ^ Gillie, Oliver (1965). "Growth and genetic control of enzyme level in Neurospora" .

Path and career

Career Among his most notable journalistic work was being the first to publicly accuse Cyril Burt of scientific fraud . In 1976, Gillie published an article claiming that Burt had fabricated much of the data he had included in his publications, as well as two women whom Burt claimed had been his research assistants, but whom Gillie concluded had never existed. He reached this conclusion after investigating to find evidence that either woman (Margaret Howard and Jane Conway) had ever existed,

Why this date

Oliver Gillie appears on our May 15 calendar for 2021 as a death entry.