Search Results for Medical Obituaries - Narrowed by: Pharmacist

First Title value, for Searching Hartley, Sir Frank (1911 - 1997)

2024-05-02T07:26:42Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-11-03
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008600-E008699
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380844380844
Occupation Pharmacist
Details Sir Frank Hartley was a pharmacist who distinguished himself in research, industry, education and in academic administration. His major contributions to medicine and to medical education were recognised by the College by his election to the honorary Fellowship in 1980, shortly after he had demitted office as Vice-Chancellor of London University. Frank was born in Nelson, Lancashire, on 5 January 1911. His father R K Hartley, a plumber, died when he was five years old, leaving his mother Ann (née Holt) to bring him up in straitened circumstances. Starting with a three year apprenticeship and long hours of evening study, he obtained the diploma of the Pharmaceutical Society as a chemist and druggist. He went on to part-time study at Birkbeck College, where he graduated in 1936, before proceeding to a PhD. He became chief chemist to the Organon Laboratories in 1940, then worked for the Ministry of Supply on penicillin. After the war, he joined the British Drug Houses and played a major part in the development of oral contraceptives, although later in life he came to regret the social changes which these drugs had facilitated. He became Dean of the School of Pharmacy in 1962 and Vice-Chancellor of London University in 1976. He was President of the Royal Society of Chemistry from 1965 to 1967, and in subsequent years was an active and loquacious member of many government committees, most notably the Medicines Commission from 1974 to 1983. He served on the councils of two medical schools and of the British Postgraduate Medical Federation, continuing participation in university affairs for many years after formal retirement. His wife Lydia, whom he married in 1937, predeceased him by one year. He died on 26 January 1997. His son Frank is now Vice-Chancellor of Cranfield University.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008661
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Rees-Thomas, Kenneth (1908 - 1992)

2024-05-02T07:26:42Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-10-01
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008200-E008299
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380463380463
Occupation General practitioner General surgeon Pharmacist
Details Kenneth Rees-Thomas was the son of Arthur, an accountant in Roseneath, New Zealand, and his wife Edith Amy, née Heal. He was educated at Roseneath Primary School and then at Wellington College. On leaving school he trained and qualified as a pharmacist, but then on the advice of a family medical friend he decided to seek a career in medicine. He got a place in the Otago Medical School, from which he qualified in 1934. After completing junior appointments in Wellington and Newtown he decided upon a career in surgery and sailed for London in January 1937. In May of that year he passed his primary Fellowship and then worked at the West London Hospital, Guy's, and St Peter's Hospital for Stone, passing his final Fellowship in 1939. Returning to Wellington at the end of 1939 he combined general practice and surgery until 1941, when he joined the army, serving with the 3rd Division Ambulance of the 4th General Hospital and 2nd Field Surgical Unit in New Caledonia with the rank of major. In 1948 he was appointed assistant surgeon to Wellington Hospital and also became FRACS in that year. In 1958 he became senior surgeon, finally retiring ten years later. In addition to this respected surgical career he had been adviser to the health department in Wellington and adviser on the pharmacology and therapeutics committee there for twenty years. Following retirement he continued his longstanding interest in musculoskeletal medicine by continuing in practice using osteopathic techniques. Outside his professional work he was active in the Baptist Church and President of the Christian Businessmen's Association, as well as the Wellington Marriage Guidance Council. Enjoying the outdoor life, he was a keen fisherman and skier. He married Irene Kent in 1938 and she pre-deceased him, as did a second son with Hodgkin's disease. He died on 26 March 1992, survived by two sons.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008280
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Wellcome, Sir Henry Solomon (1853 - 1936)

2024-05-02T07:26:42Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2013-12-04
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E004000-E004999/E004700-E004799
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/376939376939
Occupation Archaeologist Chemist Collector Pharmacist Philanthropist
Details Born in a log cabin at Almond, Portage County, 125 miles from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA, on 21 August 1853, the son of the Rev S C Wellcome and Mary Curtis, his wife; his father was a missionary working amongst the Indian tribes. The son attended the schools on the frontier, including one which was held in a typical Western log hut schoolhouse. As a boy he was in the midst of the great Sioux Indian war in Minnesota, when more than a thousand whites were massacred. He was made captain of the boys whose duty it was to cast rifle bullets for the defence of the settlement, and actively assisted his uncle, a surgeon, in treating the wounded. He chose chemistry and pharmacy as his career, studied in Chicago, took his diploma in Philadelphia, and afterwards went to New York, where he wrote several articles for scientific journals. He then travelled widely in the United States and studied the native cinchona forests in South America. He came to London in 1880 and with S M Burroughs founded a business for making fine chemicals, alkaloids, and pharmaceutical products. The firm, as Burroughs and Wellcome, was amongst the first to take advantage of modern chemistry and machinery to supply pure drugs in a solid and compressed form. The drugs were sold under the registered name of "Tabloids", a term so convenient that it was soon adopted into the English language for anything compressed into a small form. The word was employed by other manufacturers until on 14 March 1884 the Court of Appeal determined that it could only be used by Messrs Burroughs and Wellcome. Burroughs died and Wellcome carried on the business alone, until in 1914 it was converted into the Wellcome Foundation, with Wellcome as the governing director. He took out letters of naturalization as a British subject on 28 October 1910. He married on 25 June 1901 Gwendoline Maude Syria, daughter of Dr Thomas John Barnardo, the founder of Barnardo's Home. She, after a divorce, became Mrs Somerset Morgan, leaving him with one son, who survived him. He died in London after an operation on 27 July 1936, leaving a very large fortune, which he had placed in trust for the public benefit. Wellcome was a man of varied interests. Foremost came his business. From small beginnings he raised it to a world-wide concern, and being a practical man he preferred experiment to theory. He was not content to supply pure drugs, but he wished to know why they acted and how they could be put to the best use. For this purpose he founded in 1894 a physiological research laboratory first at Brockwell Hall, Herne Hill, and afterwards at Beckenham. In 1896 he opened a chemical research laboratory, in 1913 a medical research museum which included tropical medicine and hygiene with anthropology, and in 1915 an entomological field research centre at Claremont. Each of these laboratories was placed in charge of a highly skilled superintendent and much experimental work of great scientific value emanated from them. It became evident, however, that they were too widely separated and their work was co-ordinated in 1913 in a Bureau of Scientific Research, and in 1930 they were centralized at the Wellcome Research Institution, a fine building at the corner of the Euston Road and Gordon Street which was opened by Lord Moynihan on 25 November 1931. Tropical medicine interested him from the time he was amongst the first civilians to enter the Sudan after it had been recaptured in 1885. In 1900 he founded the Wellcome Tropical Research Laboratories in connexion with the Gordon Memorial College at Khartum, placed the laboratories in charge of Sir Andrew Balfour, and attached to them a floating research laboratory, which cruised through the waterways of the Nile and its tributaries in the Sudan. A few years later he gave great help in securing the foundation of the Gorgas Tropical Research Laboratories on the Panama Canal. Next in interest for Wellcome came his collection of an historical medical museum, comprising anthropological specimens, medical appliances, coins, pictures, statuary, books, and druggists' wares. It was for many years housed in inadequate premises in Wigmore Street, where it was too little known to the general public. It was mainly gathered together by C J S Thompson, afterwards keeper of the historical section at the Royal College of Surgeons' Museum, and was rearranged by his successor L G Malcolm, MA. As an archaeologist Wellcome began excavations in the Sudan in 1901 and continued them in 1910, making Gebel Moya his centre and being amongst the first to recognize the value of aerial photography in field exploration. He investigated more particularly various sites in the province of Sennar, and was especially interested in the excavations of the Bible city of Lachish. During the war of 1914-18 he instituted a special commission to secure improvements in the design of Army field ambulances. He also constructed and equipped a chemical and bacteriological motor field research laboratory, which was used in Palestine and Egypt. At different times he founded the Lady Stanley Maternity Hospital (1927), a medical hospital dispensary in Uganda, and (1908) placed a fund under the control of the China Medical Missionary Association to translate into Chinese the various medical, surgical, and chemical textbooks required by the native students, who were being educated on the lines of European medicine. Many honours came to him from various quarters. He was created a Knight Bachelor in 1932, he was invested with the Cross of the Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in France, 1934, he was admitted an LLD (1927) of the University of Edinburgh, and was elected FSA in 1913 and FRS in 1932. In New York he was awarded the Remington honour medal, the highest professional award in pharmacology, and in London (1885) he received the Royal Humane Society's medal for a gallant rescue from the Thames. Personally Wellcome was a quiet, reticent, and almost shy man, slightly below middle height, clean-shaven, alert, and quickly brightening up when he became interested in some topic of conversation. Generous and often lavish, he was not free from faults. He was a hard man, not easy to work with or to satisfy. He was arbitrary, and thought so little of those who had served him well and faithfully for many years that he would dismiss them almost at a moment's notice and seemingly without sufficient reason; in other words, he treated distinguished scientific men as though they were mere employees. A buyer of books on a large scale, he left them unsorted and uncatalogued. There was in him therefore something of the spirit of a miser. His great library was opened to the public after the second world war. In January 1924 the Wellcome Foundation Ltd was formed, to take over all the business activities of Burroughs Wellcome and Co. and the various institutions and museums founded by Wellcome, who held the whole of the share capital. By his will the shares of the Wellcome Foundation were vested in trustees for the maintenance of the Research Undertaking Charity and the Museum and Library Charity. (*Brit med J* 1937, 1, 242 and leading article at p 224.) In 1941 the Wellcome Foundation joined with other companies to form the Therapeutic Research Corporation of Great Britain. On 6 December 1937 the sale of his personal collections, including the contents of his house at Gloucester Gate, Regent's Park, was begun. The collections included some 700 chairs and settees by Chippendale and other masters, European and Oriental; weapons and fire-arms; portraits; porcelain, pottery, and glass; needlework and oriental textiles; and the largest known collection of models of boats (*The Times*, 2 December 1937, p 12e). Publications: *The story of Metlakhatala*, 1887 [The history of the Indian nation to which his father ministered]. Wellcome also wrote many chemical and Galenical reports.
Resource Identifier RCS: E004756
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset