Search Results for Medical Obituaries - Narrowed by: Pharmacologist

First Title value, for Searching O’Neill, Terence Cuthbert Anthony (1936 - 2011)

2024-05-03T07:09:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2023-12-01
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E010000-E010999/E010500-E010599
Occupation Pharmacologist Dental surgeon
Details Terence Cuthbert Anthony O’Neill was a dental surgeon from Rotherham Yorkshire.
Resource Identifier RCS: E010572
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Rawlins, Sir Michael David (1941 - 2023)

2024-05-03T07:09:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2023-03-07
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E010000-E010999/E010200-E010299
Occupation Pharmacologist
Details Sir Michael Rawlins was professor of clinical pharmacology at Newcastle University and the founding chair of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. This is a draft obituary. If you have any information about this surgeon or are interested in writing this obituary, please email lives@rcseng.ac.uk
Resource Identifier RCS: E010220
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Born, Gustav Victor Rudolf (1921 - 2018)

2024-05-03T07:09:00Z

by Tina Craig
Publication Date 2018-11-19 2021-03-08
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009400-E009499
Occupation Pharmacologist
Details Gustav Victor Born (Gus) was a pharmacologist whose work revolutionized the study of blood platelets and paved the way for modern antiplatelet therapy. Born on 29 July 1921 in Gottingen, Germany, he was the only son of Max Born, the director and professor of theoretical physics at the University of Gottingen. His mother was Hedwig (Hedi) née Ehrenberg, a writer and poet of some repute, and he had two elder sisters, Irene and Margaret (Gritli). After primary education locally, he began secondary school, but in 1933 his father lost his post and the family were advised to leave Germany due to their Jewish origins. They moved to Cambridge, where he attended the Perse School from 1933 to 1936, and then to Edinburgh where he attended the Edinburgh Academy and enrolled at the University to study medicine in 1938. The family were pacifists and, with the possibility of war on the horizon, his father advised him to become a doctor as he would then not have to kill anyone. He qualified MB, BCh in 1943 and did various house jobs, including working with James Learmonth at the Western General Hospital. He enrolled in the RAMC (under the surname ‘Buchanan’ as he felt ‘Born’ was too Germanic) and was posted to India, eventually working as a clinical pathologist. From there, in 1945, he was sent to Japan and stationed at an Army base four miles from Hiroshima. Among the horrific injuries he witnessed, what struck him most forcefully was the severe bleeding the victims suffered caused by radiation damage to the bone marrow. It was an observation that was to set the course of his most important future research. Demobilised in 1947, he returned to the UK and reverted to his proper surname – apparently sending his friends a telegram reading *Born again!*. Keen to work with Howard Florey at the William Dunn School of Pathology in Oxford, his application for a research studentship was accepted in 1948 and he graduated DPhil in 1951. After two years at a MRC research unit in Surrey he returned to Oxford as demonstrator of anatomy in the department of pathology and began his work on platelets. In 1960 he was appointed Vandervell professor of pharmacology to the Institute of Basic Medical Sciences at the Royal College of Surgeons of England and commenced a fruitful partnership with his Oxford friend and colleague John Vane (later to share a Nobel prize for his work on aspirin). He remained at the college for 13 years and it was here that he was to carry out some of his most important research. A particular innovation was the *Born aggregometer* which became used worldwide in hospitals and laboratories as a means of diagnosing platelet disorders. In 1973 he was appointed to the Shield chair in pharmacology at Cambridge University and in 1978 left to take up the post of professor of pharmacology at King’s College, London, eventually retiring in 1986, aged 65. This last appointment was probably more congenial as his family had remained in London and he found the regular commute to Cambridge quite a strain. Two years later, in 1988, he again got together with John Vane at Barts Hospital where they established the William Harvey Research Institute (WHRI) and were involved in the reorganisation of the London School of Medicine and Dentistry. At the WHRI he continued his research into atherosclerosis before finally retiring in his 87th year. A highly cultured man, he was particularly keen on music, playing the piano and the flute which he played to almost professional standards. Probably arising from his post war experiences, he founded an organisation called *Pugwash* which promoted the cause of nuclear disarmament. In the days well before mobiles his love of the telephone was legendary and it was said that he would stop on his way to work to ‘phone his instructions to his lab assistants from a call box rather than issue them in person. Professional colleagues were wearily accustomed to receiving calls from him at eccentric hours from all over the world. He married (Wilfreda) Ann Plowden-Wardlow, a doctor and psychoanalyst, in Edinburgh in 1950. They had three children: Max Russell (born 1951), Sebastian John Paul (born 1953) and Georgina Emma Mary (born 1955). The marriage ended in divorce in 1961 and the following year he married Faith Maurice-Williams, also a doctor, and they had two children, Carey and Matthew. When he died on 16 April 2018 aged 96 years, Faith survived him together with his five children.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009474
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Dale, Sir Henry Hallet (1875 - 1968)

2024-05-03T07:09:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-07-22
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E005000-E005999/E005600-E005699
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/377870377870
Occupation Pharmacologist
Details Henry Hallett Dale was born in London on 9 June 1875 and educated at the Leys School and Trinity College, Cambridge. He got a first-class in the Natural Science Tripos and spent two years doing research in the physiology laboratory under Langley before proceeding to St Bartholomew's hospital for his clinical studies. He graduated in medicine in 1903. He then spent some time in physiological study at University College, London, under Starling, and went for a few months to Frankfurt to study under Ehrlich. On his return to England he became pharmacologist on the staff of the Wellcome Physiological Research Laboratories, for which he was Director from 1904 till 1914, the year in which he was elected FRS. Right from the start he took a special interest in the chemical mediators of physiological processes, and during this appointment he distinguished himself not only for his own researches, but also as a wise director of the more junior members of his laboratory. In 1914 Dale joined the Medical Research Council, and his work for it and for the Royal Society, and the British Council is so well-known that it is unnecessary to record it in detail here. It is appropriate, however, to refer to Dale's kindly interest in the development of the scientific departments of the Royal College of Surgeons, and it was due to his chairmanship of the Wellcome Trust that the College was able to establish the Wellcome Museums of Pathology and Anatomy. He was elected an Honorary Fellow of the College in 1945, a Trustee of the Hunterian Museum in 1948, an original member of the Court of Patrons in 1956, and became a Fellow of the Faculty of Anaesthetists in 1950. In 1957 he performed the opening ceremony of the Research Department of Anaesthetics. All who came into contact with him recognized him as a great man and a very lovable person. In 1904 Dale married his cousin Ellen Harriet Hallett, and she died in 1967. When he died on 23 July 1968 they were survived by their two daughters; their only son had died in 1957.
Resource Identifier RCS: E005687
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Vane, Sir John Robert (1927 - 2004)

2024-05-03T07:09:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2005-10-26 2012-03-09
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E000000-E000999/E000100-E000199
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/372326372326
Occupation Pharmacologist
Details John Vane shared the Nobel prize in 1982 with Bergström and Samuelsson for discovering how aspirin works, based on the research he had carried out at the Institute of Basic Medical Sciences in our College, where he was successively senior lecturer, reader and then professor between 1955 and 1973. Born on 29 March 1927 in Tardebigg, Worcestershire, he was the son of Maurice Vane and Frances Florence née Fisher. As a boy he blew up the kitchen with a chemistry set, so his father built him a shed in the garden to serve as a laboratory. He read chemistry at Birmingham University, graduating at 19, and then went on to St Catherine's College, Oxford, to read pharmacology, winning the Stothert research fellowship of the Royal Society in 1951. Between 1951 and 1953 he was assistant professor of pharmacology at Yale, coming back to our College where the head of the Institute of Basic Medical Sciences was William Paton, succeeded by Gustav Born, then both leading pharmacologists of their day. It was at a time when prostaglandins were being discovered, and Vane had a notion that aspirin might work by inhibiting their formation, and went on to show that aspirin and indomethacin did in fact inhibit prostaglandin synthetase. Later he developed the anti-inflammatory drugs which inhibited cyclo-oxygenase-2 (the Cox 2 inhibitors) and captopril, the first of the ACE inhibitors. In 1973 he left the College to become director of research and development at the Wellcome Foundation, where his research group discovered prostacylin, the agent which dilates blood vessels and prevents platelets from sticking together. He retired from the Wellcome in 1985 to set up a new research establishment, the William Harvey Research Institute at St Bartholomew's Hospital. He retired again in 1995, but continued as the director of the institute's charitable foundation. He was an inspiring teacher and many young surgeons spent a profitable year under his supervision at the College learning the principles of basic scientific research. He married Elizabeth Daphne Page in 1948. Basically shy, he was a most agreeable companion. He and Daphne built a house in Virgin Gorda in the Caribbean, where he enjoyed underwater swimming. He died from pneumonia on 19 November 2004, leaving Daphne and their two daughters.
Resource Identifier RCS: E000139
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Koch, Arthur Cecil Elsley (1903 - 1969)

2024-05-03T07:09:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-08-26
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E005000-E005999/E005800-E005899
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/378053378053
Occupation Pharmacologist Physiologist
Details Arthur Koch was born in Colombo on 20 November 1903 into a family distinguished for public service in Ceylon. He was educated at the Royal College, Colombo, and in 1922 entered the Ceylon Medical College where he had an outstanding undergraduate career, winning 5 medals in the course of study for the qualification of LMS Ceylon which he took in 1927. After several resident appointments at the General Hospital, Colombo, he became a demonstrator in physiology in the Ceylon Medical College in 1935, being promoted to assistant lecturer in physiology and pharmacology in 1940, and lecturer in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Ceylon in 1945. In 1948 he came over to Oxford to work with Professor C G Douglas in the department of human physiology, and since he was precluded by University regulations from taking a DPhil he presented a thesis for the BSc and was granted this research degree. On returning to Ceylon he was appointed Reader, and in 1952 Professor of Physiology and Pharmacology. From 1954 till 1969 he acted as the local examiner in physiology for the Primary FRCS examinations held in Ceylon, and also for the Dental and Anaesthetic Primaries. For these services to the Royal College of Surgeons he was elected to the Fellowship in 1966. He retired from his Chair in 1968, and was made Emeritus Professor. This brief outline of his remarkable career, which omits the honours he received from various professional and scientific bodies, is yet sufficient to indicate why he was greatly respected by his colleagues in the Faculty of Medicine, and loved by his students. He was a great teacher, and his work was his life. That his reputation as a physiologist extended beyond his native land is shown by his election to the Physiological Society of Great Britain in 1957. It is also noteworthy that he was the first from the Far East to examine in the Primary at Queen Square, in the same year. He was interested in music, literature and the theatre, but his chief interest outside his work was in photography, and he received several awards at International Exhibitions held in Ceylon, and during the second world war built his own photographic enlarger. In 1941 he married Doris Christobel Mary, daughter of Dr A C A Fernando, and when he died on 7 August 1969 his wife and their son and daughter survived him.
Resource Identifier RCS: E005870
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Black, Sir James Whyte (1924 - 2010)

2024-05-03T07:09:00Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-10-22 2015-12-16
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008500-E008599
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380687380687
Occupation Pharmacologist Physiologist
Details Sir James Black was a leading physiologist and pharmacologist whose development of drugs to block beta receptors in the heart and histamine receptors in the gastro-intestinal tract led to a revolution in the treatment of patients with heart disease and ulcers. He was awarded a Nobel prize for his work. He was born in Fife, Scotland, one of five sons of a mining engineer and colliery manager. He was educated at Beath High School, from which he gained the Patrick Hamilton residential scholarship to study medicine at St Andrews. He graduated in 1946. He immediately entered a career in physiology and pharmacology. After junior appointments at St Andrews, where he worked under R C Garry, and in Malaya, he was appointed as senior lecturer and head of the department of physiology at the Glasgow Veterinary School, where he developed a prosperous department. At that time he worked closely with Adam Smith on the suppression of gastric secretion by serotonin and developed his ideas on the role of histamine in acid secretion, which would come to fruition later in his career. In 1958, he joined the Imperial Chemical Industries' (ICI) department of animal physiology at Alderley Edge, where he studied catecholamine receptors, and identified the existence of beta receptors on heart muscle cells to which the stress hormones adrenaline and noradrenaline bind. He developed beta blocker drugs to suppress the action of the receptors. In 1964 he was appointed head of biological research at Smith Kline and French, where he produced drugs to block H2 receptors and control acid secretion in the gastro-intestinal tract. He returned to academic life as Professor of Pharmacology at University College, London, in 1973, and continued his work on receptors. He was appointed director of therapeutic research at the Wellcome Research Laboratories in 1978, a post he occupied for six years, before returning to academic pharmacology as Professor of Analytical Pharmacology at the Rayne Institute, King's College of Medicine in London. He retired in 1989. Sir James returned to Scotland, being appointed chancellor of the University of Dundee in 1991. Among innumerable awards and medals, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1976. He was knighted in 1981 and was awarded the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine in 1988, sharing the prize with Gertrude B Elion and George H Hitchings. He met Hilary Vaughan at a student ball and they married in 1946. She predeceased him in 1986. They had one daughter, Stephanie. He married Rona Mackie in 1994. Sir James died on 21 March 2010.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008504
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset