The department of social and preventive medicine at Oxford was created in 1942, with Stewart as assistant head. In 1950 she succeeded as head of the unit, but to her disappointment she was not granted the title of "professor", as awarded to her predecessor, because by then the post was considered not to be of great importance. Stewart retired in 1974. Her most famous investigation came after her formal retirement, while an honorary member of the department of social medicine at the
University of Birmingham. Sir
Richard Doll, the epidemiologist respected for his work on smoking-related illnesses, attributed her anomalous findings to a "questionable" statistical analysis supplied by her assistant,
George Kneale (who was aware of, but may have miscalculated, the unintentional "over-reporting" of cancer diagnoses in communities near to the works). Stewart herself acknowledged that her results were outside the range considered statistically significant. Today, however, her account is valued as a response to the perceived bias in reports produced by the nuclear industry. In 1986, she was added to the
roll of honour of the
Right Livelihood Foundation, an annual award presented in
Stockholm. Stewart eventually gained her coveted title of "professor" through her appointment as a professorial
fellow of
Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. In 1997 Stewart was invited to become the first Chair of the
European Committee on Radiation Risk. Her biography by
Gayle Greene,
The Woman Who Knew Too Much, was first published in 1999. ==Selected publications==