Edith Bülbring entered Bonn University to study medicine in 1923. On completion of her studies she worked initially as a physician, then as a research assistant to Paul Trendelenburg, professor of pharmacology, in Berlin. After his death in 1931 she found a position in the infectious disease unit of the Virchow Krankenhaus, also in Berlin, from where she was dismissed in 1933 because of her Jewish ancestry. During a holiday in England shortly afterwards she visited her former colleague at the Virchow Krankenhaus, Ulrich Friedemann, then a refugee working in Sir Henry Dale's laboratory in Hampstead. Through Dale she was offered a post with J H Burn, Director of the Pharmacological Laboratories of the Pharmaceutical Society in London. When Burn was appointed to the Chair of Pharmacology at Oxford in 1937, Bülbring also came to Oxford as his research assistant and departmental demonstrator. In the late 1940s she began independent research on the physiology of smooth muscle. She was to become a leading authority in that field, building up and obtaining funding for a large research group which published over 200 papers. In 1946 she was promoted to University Demonstrator and Lecturer and in 1960 to ad hominem Reader. In 1967 she was appointed to a personal professorship. She was naturalized in 1948.