My aunt June Goodfield, who has died aged 97, was a gifted communicator: a scientist, historian, writer and film-maker who forged a role for herself at the interface between science and society, as she put it, “so that the layman can come to understand what science is and what is being done in its name”.
Born in Stratford upon Avon to Eleanor (nee Ashton) and Richard Goodfield, a Congregationalist minister, she went to Solihull high school in the West Midlands. After a zoology degree from University College, Nottingham, and a year at the Medical Research Council in Oxford, she taught biology at Cheltenham Ladies college and Benenden school in Kent until returning to study. In 1959 she gained a PhD in history and the philosophy of science from Leeds University.
The following year she married the philosopher Stephen Toulmin, and they set up the Nuffield Foundation’s unit for the history of scientific ideas, producing films and books on the history and philosophy of science for sixth forms and introductory university courses. There June’s writing skills began to emerge, and with Stephen she co-wrote three well-received books, The Fabric of the Heavens (1961), The Architecture of Matter (1962) and The Discovery of Time (1965).
From the early 1960s she and Stephen divided their time between the UK and the US, and June took up academic posts at various US institutions, including Wellesley College and Harvard, Michigan State, Rockefeller and George Mason universities.
By the time of their divorce in 1972, she was carving out a niche as an insightful witness to biomedical research. The science fascinated her, but her writing and film-making were now underpinned by an interest in the characters and motivations of the scientists themselves, apparent in her books The Siege of Cancer (1975), Playing God (1977) and, especially, An Imagined World (1981), in which she shadowed the work of the immunologist Maria de Sousa over a period of five years.
In the 1980s June travelled the world to interview scientists for two books and an accompanying television series, From the Face of the Earth (Channel 4, 1985), about five epidemiological success stories including the eradication of smallpox, and The Planned Miracle (BBC, 1991), about a campaign to immunise the world’s children. Her documentary on population issues, The Cosmic Joke, was broadcast by the BBC in 1992.
June also wrote two political thrillers, Courier to Peking (1973) and Rotten at the Core (2001), and in 2008 more than two decades of research culminated in Rivers of Time, part biography, part historical novel, which was inspired by the discovery of a gravestone on the Caribbean island of Nevis, where she spent many winters.
In later years June settled in Alfriston in East Sussex, where she collaborated on local history books. Partially deaf from an early age, she was resilient, energetic and highly articulate. With such a keen intellect she was easily bored and could be imperious, but she was extremely kind and always generous to family and friends.
She is survived by her nieces, Alison, Caroline, Gillian and me.
