This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Patricia M. Byrne. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Born: 12 January 1947, United Kingdom
Died: 5 October 1994
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: Mary Hill (Hilary) Morrison
Stevenson, Hilary (Mary Hill) (1947–94), food scientist, was born 12 January 1947 at Coleraine, Co. Londonderry, the only daughter of James Stewart Morrison , of a farming family, and Elizabeth Morrison (née Martin) of Coleraine. Her childhood was spent at Drumadaun, Seacon Road, in the townland of Balrashane, Coleraine, and she went to secondary school at Coleraine High School. She entered QUB, where she graduated with first-class honours in chemistry (1969) and agriculture (1970), after which she joined the Department of Agriculture for Northern Ireland (DANI) as agriculture inspector and lecturer at Loughry College of Agriculture and Food Technology. Interested in research she obtained an M.Sc. (1971) in food science and microbiology, when she was seconded to the University of Strathclyde, Scotland. In 1974 she was promoted to senior scientific officer for DANI and was transferred within the department to the agricultural chemistry research division. That same year she was also appointed university lecturer in the department of agriculture and food science at QUB, where she taught a wide range of courses, contributing particularly to those on food chemistry and human nutrition. In 1981 she was awarded a Ph.D. for studies in the mineral metabolism of poultry and was promoted to principal scientific officer for DANI.
As her career developed her research interests changed focus. Her M.Sc. research topic related to the vitamin content of peas before and after processing, but after her return from Scotland she began working on the absorption of minerals by sheep. During the 1970s she worked on poultry nutrition. She published numerous papers on the mineral metabolism of the laying hen, the protein nutrition of broilers, and nutrition and metabolism in the goose in British Poultry Science and Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture. By the mid-1980s her research interests had turned to the science of irradiated food and it is in this area that she made her most enduring contribution. Irradiation sterilises food by bombarding it with low-level gamma rays, and it is claimed that chemicals (free radicals) produced by this process are potentially carcinogenic. Through her work on methods of detecting irradiated food (mainly poultry but also meat and shellfish), she became one of the most influential scientists in the world in this area, and in recognition of her work was awarded OBE (1993). She published over forty papers on this subject, many in the International Journal of Food Science and Technology. As well as co-editing Food irradiation and the chemist she also contributed to almost twenty books and was working on another, Detection of irradiated food – current status before her death. Collaborating with academics in Europe, the USA and South Africa, she led several international research programmes and was an active participant in conferences organised by the Atomic Energy Agency and the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations.
As a fellow of the Institute of Food Science and Technology, she was chairperson of its Northern Ireland branch, and was an active member of the Nutrition Society. She was referee to British Poultry Science and contributed to its success by also sitting on the council of management and on the business committee. Remembered for her professionalism, integrity, and enthusiasm, she set high standards for herself and her team of researchers.
A person of great humanity and compassion, she was a committed Christian who often put others before herself. Outside her work her interests were reading and walking. She married (11 September 1976) Noel Stevenson; they lived in Lisburn, Co. Antrim, and had no children. Committed to her work, she was influential in bringing an international conference on detection of irradiation to Belfast in 1994, four months before her untimely death. She had battled with a prolonged illness before she died 5 October 1994 at the age of 47.