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

2024-05-19T16:24:10Z

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)

2024-05-19T16:24:10Z

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

Search Results for Medical Obituaries - Narrowed by: Physiologist - Pharmacologist

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

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