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Sir William Allen Daley was born in Bootle, Lancashire, on 19 February 1887; educated at Merchant Taylors' School, Crosby; graduated BSc in Chemistry, London, 1906; MB, ChB with first-class honours, Liverpool, 1909; MB, BS, London, 1910, with distinction in medicine. He obtained the Cambridge diploma in public health in 1911 with distinction, and his London MD degree in 1912.

Daley held resident posts in Liverpool and became resident medical officer at the London Fever Hospital in 1911. After his father's death, 1911, he was recalled to Bootle to succeed him as Medical Officer of Health, later holding similar appointments in Blackburn, 1920-1925 and Hull, 1925-1929. Daley was appointed to serve on a departmental committee of the Ministry of Health on the recruitment and training of midwives, 1928; appointed as Principal Medical Officer of the London County Council, 1929; became deputy to Frederick Menzies, 1938; succeeded Menzies as County Medical Officer, 1939 and was elected FRCP, 1939.

The National Health Service Act of 1946 led to a period of great activity during which the London County Council hospitals were transferred to the newly formed regional hospital boards, and simultaneously steps were taken to absorb the personal health services previously in the care of the metropolitan boroughs which made up the county council area, Daley's skill aided this advancement. Daley retired in 1952, however, he transferred his personal files to his home and continued to serve on the many committees to which he had been appointed in a personal capacity. After his retirement he visited Australia on behalf of the Nuffield Foundation, lecturing on the British National Health Service and lectured in North America, where for several months he was Associate Health Officer of the city of Baltimore.

Daley was president of the Central Council for Health Education; chairman of the Chadwick trustees; President of the National Association for Maternal and Child Welfare and vice-chairman of the Academic Board of the Royal Postgraduate Hospital at Hammersmith in West London. Daley's work was recognised with a knighthood in 1944 and with an honorary physicianship to George VI, 1947. Daley died on 21 February 1969.

Publications include The development of the hospital services with particular reference to the municipal hospital system of London William Allen Daley and Reginald Coleman, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine (35, 1941-2, 45-56) and Population Education in Public Health William Allen Daley and Hester Viney, 1927.

Dr Christopher Charles Gawler Draper was born in Malaysia in 1921; educated at Sherbourne and read Medicine at New College Oxford, graduating 1945. During his time in Oxford he was involved with the trials of penicillin at the Radcliffe Infirmary as part of the war effort and then spent a year as a resident junior doctor before being posted to Japan with the ANZACs for 18 months as a medical officer.

Undertook a 6 month posting in the Middle East with the International Red Cross, 1949; worked at a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan and was the first medical officer in the camp. Following his return to the UK, he took the Diploma in Public Health and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and became a member of staff at the School and worked at LSHTM as a junior lecturer under Professor George MacDonald for 3 years. During this period he travelled to West Africa for research trips; was recruited by the East African Medical Research Service to take charge of the Pare-Taveta scheme to control malaria and worked on methods of measuring the impact of the disease on the broader health status of the people living in the region. In particular, he carried out a famous study concerning the growth of children, 1954-1960, funded by the British government. The study was written up for Draper's doctoral thesis which he completed in 1963.

Draper returned to LSHTM in 1959 and spent a year learning the techniques needed to study viruses and was appointed deputy director of the West African Council Unit in Lagos, 1960, he where he and his wife Katharine stayed for 3 years and whilst in West Africa, isolated a new virus in the Cameroons. Draper worked for the Wellcome Foundation as a medical virologist in Kent, 1964-1968; returned to LSHTM as a senior lecturer in the Department of Tropical Hygiene, 1969 and throughout the 1970s and 1980s carried out numerous research projects abroad which covered a huge range of topics. In 1970 he returned to East Africa to study the Pare-Taveta. He made visits to Brazil, Salvador, the United States, Mauritius, Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Egypt, the Caribbean, Panama, India, the Philippines, Burma, Thailand, Greece, Zambia, Cameroon, Nepal and China. His work mainly concerned malaria as well as rabies, bilharzias (schistosomiasis), Burkitt's lymphoma and leprosy.

Draper was a member of the WHO advisory committee on malaria and the tropical medicine research board and travelled to make inspection visits to various countries and was a pioneer of the ELISA tests and research in sero-epidemiology. After retirement he peer reviewed books and wrote several journal articles and still travelled on behalf of the WHO.

Dr James T Duncan was born in Ireland in 1884; educated at schools in Dublin and Watford and attended Dublin Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons. Post qualification, Duncan spent a year visiting Medical Colleges in the United States and Canada and was appointed lecturer in anatomy at the Edward VII Medical School, Malaya, 1914; later becoming Acting Principal of the Edward VII Medical School, 1916. He returned to England and took a course at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine at the Albert Dock Hospital, 1919, later being appointed as assistant to Dr Newham.

Duncan was attached to the Bacteriological Department at LSHTM from 1929, studying the Salmonella and Brucella groups, having already demonstrated skill in this field, in 1922, by separating Brucella abortus from man, the first published record of this. Duncan was moved to Winchester with the Emergency Medical services, 1939, and became Chairman of the Medical Research Council Committee on Mycology, initiating a movement for the establishment of a centre for Medical Mycology in London, which was later established at LSHTM. Duncan was appointed as Reader in Mycology to the University of London, 1945 and formed active centres of mycology in Leeds, Exeter, Glasgow and Birmingham Universities. Duncan retired in 1949.

Publications include An Annotated Bibliography of Medical Mycology, 1943(-1950) edited by Duncan and others (Kew, 1944-1951) and Review of Medical and Veterinary Mycology edited by Duncan and others (Kew, 1951-).

Herbert Edward Durham was born in 1866 and was the son of A E Durham, once senior surgeon to Guy's Hospital and grandson of William Ellis, the economist. Durham was educated at University College School and King's College, Cambridge, and obtained a first class in both parts of the Natural Science Tripos in 1890.

In 1894 Durham passed FRCS and then won a Gull studentship on which he went to Vienna to work in the Grubler's hygiene laboratory. While there, his attention was drawn to the diagnostic value of agglutination in the serum of animals protected by prophylactic inoculations. In 1896, this reaction was applied to typhoid, when at first it was known as the Grubler-Durham reaction, but the title was later changed to that of the Widal reaction. In that year he also became a member of the Royal Society's Committee on disease spread by tsetse flies. In 1897 he produced the universally used and famous Durham tubes to measure the amount of gas produced in culture by bacteria.

In 1900 he led an expedition to Brazil organised by the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine to study yellow fever and between 1901 and 1903 he undertook an expedition with Dr P T Manson to Christmas Island, in the Indian Ocean, but this was marred by the tragedy of his young colleague's death.

From Malaya he brought back the roots of Derris elliptica which were found to possess definite insecticidal properties and it seems that Durham was the first to draw attention to this phenomenon. In 1905 he forsook medicine to become supervisor of the laboratories of Messrs H P Bulmer & Co of Hereford who were engaged in brewing cider. Thereafter for thirty years he worked at the problems of fermentation, and was hardly ever seen in medical circles. In 1935 he retired to Cambridge, to his garden where he tended strange plants and herbs, many of when he had originally introduced into this country. Durham died in 1945.

Robert Henry Elliot was born in 1864; educated at Bedford School, St Bartholomew's Hospital and later gained qualifications as Bachelor of Surgery, London; Doctor of Surgery, Edinburgh; Doctor of Medicine and Diploma of Public Health. Elliot was awarded Preliminary Scientific Exhibition Bentley Surgical Prize; Montefoire Medal and Scholarship in Military Surgery and Maclean Prize in Clinical Medicine, Netley 1892.

Elliot worked as Superintendent of Government Hospital Ophthalmic Hospital, Madras and Professor of Ophthalmology, Madras Medical College, 1904-1914; Hunterian Professor, Royal College of Surgeons, England; Chairman of Naval and Military Committee of British Medical Association, 1917-1922; Honourable Consulting Ophthalmic Surgeon, Hospital for Tropical Diseases, London; Vice President Institute of Hygiene; Chairman of Council British Health Resorts Association and Lecturer in Ophthalmology, London School of Tropical Medicine. Elliot was a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons and Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians, London. Elliot died 9 November 1936.

Publications include: Sclero-corneal Trephining in the Operative Treatment of Glaucoma (George Pulman and Sons, London, 1913); The Indian Operation of Couching for Cataract (London, 1917) and Tropical Ophthalmology (H Frowde, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1920).

Percy Cyril Claude Garnham was born in London, 15 January 1901; graduated from St Bartholomew's Hospital, 1923; Diploma in Public Health, 1924; moved to Kenya to take up a position with the Colonial Medical Service, 1925. Here he spent a number of years investigating and controlling outbreaks of epidemics such as yellow fever and sleeping sickness. His interests whilst in Kenya ranged from the viral aetiologies of Rift Valley Fever and Nairobi Sheep Disease, studied in cooperation with the service's Veterinary Department, and through bird malaria to monkey and human malaria.

When the Division of Insect Borne Diseases was set up in Nairobi, Garnham became its Malaria Research Officer and then Director. He submitted a thesis on malaria in Kisumu for the degree of MD which he gained in 1928, with the award of Gold Medal from the University of London. In 1947, Garnham returned to London where he became a Reader at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Much of his interest was in malaria parasites, but he also made major contributions on leishmaniasis, piroplasmosis, toxoplasmosis, haemogregarines and many other parasites. In January 1948 Garnham and Professor Henry Shortt discovered the pre-erythroctic stages of true malaria parasites. He was appointed chair of Protozoology in 1952, and became Head of the Department of Parasitology.

Garnham retired as Emeritus of the University of London in 1968 and was invited to be Research Fellow for Imperial College at Silwood Park in Ascot. He collected over 1000 type and voucher specimens of nearly 200 species of malaria parasites from 170 vertebrates or vectors. The collection was catalogued with Dr Tony Duggan and deposited in National History Museum. At the age of 71 Garnham launched an expedition to Borneo to rediscover and redescribe 'P. pitheci,' a malaria parasite of the orang-utan. He came across a new host 'P. silvaticum' in 1972. Between 1926 and 1989 Garnham published solely or jointly more than 400 papers, including 'Malaria Parasites and other Haemosporidia' in 1966. He retired in 1979 and wrote a book on the life of Edgar Allen Poe which was nearing completion on his death on Christmas Day 1994. During his lifetime Garner received Fellowship of the Royal Society, Corresponding Membership of five Foreign Scientific Academies, Honorary Membership of 16 Societies, 14 Medals and Prizes, Doctorates Honories Causa of 2 French Faculties of Medicine, an appointment as Pontifical Academician of the Vatican and the CMG award. Twenty-one taxa parasites and vectors were named after him.

Publications include: Malaria parasites and other haemosporidia (Blackwell Scientific, Oxford, 1966); Progress in parasitology Athlone Press, London, 1971) and Catalogue of the Garnham collection of malaria parasites and other haemosporidia by P C C Garnham and A J Duggan (Cambridge University Press [for] the Wellcome Trust, Cambridge, c1986).

Professor John David Gillett was born in 1913; began working with P A Buxton's Department of Entomology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 1930 having failed nine O-Level subjects at school, 1930; his first appointment was feeding and general upkeep of the Department's colonies of living insects.

Gillett went to East Africa with H S Leeson to educate himself in the study of mosquitoes, 1936, staying on for the next 26 years in Uganda's Medical Department. This was only interrupted with visits to the UK to obtain degrees and during World War Two, when he spent a year on an island in Lake Victoria, attempting to control sleeping sickness by reducing the number of tsetse in the infected area - this was a short term solution and it eventually became necessary to evacuate the island's entire population. In 1941, an outbreak of yellow fever occurred in western Uganda and he was seconded to the Rockefeller Foundation's Yellow Fever Institute to work in Bwamba on the old Congo border.

Gillett chose to retake his O-levels and then A-levels and was accepted at University College London to read Zoology, Physiology and Biochemistry. He graduated in 1949, with first class honours and returned to Uganda with his wife and two children to rejoin Haddow at what had become the East African Virus Research Institute. In 1955 he was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship to study mosquito virus relations in the United States. After his return to Uganda he was appointed Assistant Director to Alec Haddow at the East African Virus Research Institute, where they collaborated in a study of periodic behaviour in mosquitoes. He awarded the DSc from London, 1960.

Gillett returned to Britain, 1962, and was elected to the Chair of Applied Biology at Brunel University where later he was appointed Head of Biological Sciences. After serving two years as Treasurer of the Royal Entomological Society of London, he was elected President, 1977-79, and retired, 1978, becoming a Senior Research Fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Gillett died in 1995.

Publications include: Mosquitoes (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1971); Yellow fever in western Uganda By Mahaffy, A. F., K. C. Smithburn, H. R. Jacopx and J. D. Gillettt. (Trans. R. Sox. Trop. Med. Hyg. 36, 1942) and The cyclical transmission of yellow fever virus through the grivet monkey, Cercopithecus aethiops centraZis Neumann, and the mosquito Aedes Megomyia africanus by Ross, R. W. and J. D. Gillett (Theobald. Ann. Trop. Med. Parasit. 44, 1950).

Major Greenwood was born in 1880 and was the third generation and only surviving son in a family of East End General Practitioners. He was expected to follow suit, but was rescued for medical research by the physiologist Sir Leonard Hill, father of Bradford Hill. Trained in the laboratories of Hill; instructed in biometry and statistics by Karl Pearson, Greenwood developed Karl Pearson's rigorous mathematical logic in a way which made medical statistics acceptable to a previously hostile and uncomprehending medical profession.

Greenwood became a medical statistician to the Lister Institute, 1910, where he published numerous studies which added to his fame, among others, with his friend Arthur Bacot, on the epidemiology of plague in India. He was then called during World War One to the medical research subsection of the Ministry of Munitions and became immersed in industrial problems. After the end of war, working for the Medical Research Council, he was appointed first senior medical statistician to the new (1919) Ministry of Health with Sir George Newman. Having already collaborated with WWC Topley on Medical Research Council sponsored studies in experimental epidemiology, their collaboration continued when, in 1927, both men were appointed to new chairs in the new London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Greenwood was appointed Professor of Epidemiology and Vital Statistics, a post which he held until his retirement in 1945. When Brig. Parkinson was recalled to service in 1943, Greenwood stood in and carried out the onerous duties of the Dean of the School until his successor could be appointed.

He was the Milroy Lecturer at the Royal College of Physicians in 1922, received the Buchanan Medal of the Royal Society in 1927 and was a Gold Medallist of the Royal Statistical Society. He died very suddenly in October 1949.

A survey of growth in the pre-school child in England and Wales, [1977] was conducted by London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Department of Health and Social Security. This questionnaire for a Longitudinal Group was completed by participants in 1977 and answered on behalf of children by a parent. Although children appear to have been given an identifying serial number, their names have been abbreviated and appear at the top of questionnaires in pencil. Questionnaires focussed upon the milk intake of children, whether they were entitled to subsidised milk, illnesses suffered and measurements. At least three visits were conducted per child, with data collected each time; however it is believed that the results of this study were never published.

Born 1861; educated Epsom College and London Hospital; Assistant Resident Medical Officer, South-East Fever Hospital, New Cross, London; House Physician, House Surgeon and Resident Accoucheur, London Hospital; Medical Officer in charge Sleeping Sickness Extended Investigation; Principal Medical Officer, Uganda Protectorate, 1908-1918; Lt Col Commanding Uganda Medical Service and Assistant Director of Medical Services for Uganda, 1914-1918; Fellow Royal Institute of Public Health; Fellow Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene; died 1946. Publications: Observations relating to the transmission of Sleeping Sickness in Uganda; the distribution and bionomics of Glossina palpalis; and to clearing measures and Progress Report on the Uganda Sleeping Sickness Camps from December, 1906, to November 30th, 1908 (Royal Society, Sleeping Sickness Bureau, London, 1909).

Michael Stewart Rees Hutt, born 1 October 1922; awarded senior lectureship in pathology at St Thomas' Hospital Medical School in London and appointed Professor of Pathology at Makerere University College, Kampala, in Uganda, 1962.

Whilst in Uganda, Hutt organised a country-wide postal pathology system so that remote hospitals received diagnoses in time to be meaningful; enabled one of the few excellent tropical country cancer registries to be set up and stimulated much medical research. Hutt and Dennis Burkitt made a road safari around the mission and government hospitals of Uganda and eastern Zaire, mid-1960s, gathering cancer incidence data. This work on illnesses including Burkitt's lymphoma, oesophageal and liver cancer was important in demonstrating that cancer is a very non-uniform disease. Hutt's work regarding a tumour called Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) showed that on the Uganda/Zaire border it accounted for 10 per cent of all tumours among adults, this occurred prior to the epidemic of HIV and Aids and was a crucial discovery.

Hutt returned to UK in 1970 and became Professor of Geographical Pathology in a unit created for him and Burkitt in St Thomas', developing a system of diagnostic pathology for resource-poor countries. Hutt retired in 1983; continued to press for support of medicine in Africa, especially in Uganda and through the Commonwealth Secretariat organised an umbrella group 'Apecsa, the Association of Pathologists of East, Central and Southern Africa', to reinforce pathology provision and local staff in Africa. Hutt died in Crickhowell, Powys on 29 March 2000.

Publications include: The geography of non-infectious disease (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1986) and Kaposi's sarcoma: 2nd Kaposi's Sarcoma Symposium, Kampala, January 8 to 11, 1980 edited by Hutt and others (Karger, New York, 1981).

Sir William Wilson Jameson was born in 1885; educated at Aberdeen University and University College London, graduating in arts at Aberdeen in 1905 and qualified MB Ch.B at Marischal College in 1909. After resident posts in London hospitals he obtained the DPH in 1914. Henry Kenwood, on the outlook for talent for his department as Professor of Hygiene at University College London appointed him assistant lecturer in the same year; the two men then shared academic and wartime duties throughout World War One.

Jameson served in France, Italy, and at Aldershot as Specialist Sanitary Officer in the Royal Army Medical Corps, deputising in between teaching duties and the running of the department for Kenwood during the latter's absences serving with the Army Medical Advisory Board. Demobilised in 1919, Jameson then spent almost 10 years as MOH in Finchley and St Marylebone, and writing Synopsis of Hygiene (1st ed. 1920), with G S Parkinson. Appointed to the new Chair of Public Health at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, January 1929, he managed his new responsibilities as Professor, Head of Division, and Dean of the School with the consummate skill and tact needed within the new School.

Jameson was appointed Dean after the death of Sir Andrew Balfour in 1931, a position he held for nine years until he was appointed Chief Medical Officer of the Ministry of Health in 1940, a position he held for ten years. His further very distinguished career included decisive influence on the creation of the National Health Service through his links with the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education. For a time he acted part-time as Medical Advisor to the Secretary of State for the Colonies. He travelled widely in the tropics and visited Uganda and West Africa where his advice on many matters was been sought, so he was also of great service to tropical medicine. He was the Harveian Orator of the Royal College of Physicians in 1942 and he received the Bisset Hawkins Medal in 1950. He served on the General Medical Council from 1942-1947. Jameson was knighted, 1939; Knight Commander of the Bath, 1943 and Knight Grand Cross Order of the British Empire, 1949. Jameson died in 1962.

Publications include A synopsis of hygiene by W. W. Jameson and G. S. Parkinson (Churchill, London, 1936).

Born in Liverpool, Leeson joined Professor Robert Newstead in the Entomological Department of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in 1909; joined the RAMC and worked with Newstead, Major EE Austen and Mr R Jackson on houseflies in France, from 1915; returning from the war he passed his sanitation examinations and became an Associate of the Royal Sanitary Institute; began his association with the London School of Tropical Medicine, 1925, being chosen as collector-demonstrator to Colonel A Alcock in the Entomological Department; From 1926 to 1928 he spent three years in Southern Rhodesia on an Anopheles survey - a work which was published as Memoir No.4 of the Research Series of the School; From 1933 to 1936 he returned to Southern Rhodesia on a study of Anopheles gambiae and Anopheles funestus; In 1936 he went on an expedition to East Africa, including Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika to study Anopheles funestus. Greece and Albania from 1938 with a Rockefeller Grant; during the Second World War he played an important part in malaria prevention in Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Cyprus by carrying out anopheline surveys as the entomologist of No.2 Malaria Field Laboratory of which Professor G Macdonald was for some time commanding officer; in charge of the malaria wing of the Middle East School of Hygiene, 1943-1945; when the War ended he returned to the School to work as lecturer in the Department of Entomology and a Recognised Teacher of the University of London; elected a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society in 1930 and of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in 1943. Leeson wrote many scientific papers, his major works include No.4 of the School's Memoir series on anopheline mosquitoes of Southern Rhodesia and No.7 on anopheles in the Near East. He also assisted Professor Buxton in his work on tsetse flies, No.10 of the Memoir series.

Leiper was born in 1881 in Kilmarnock; his father died from tuberculosis when Robert Leiper was 14 which affected him greatly turning him to medical science rather than clinical practice; educated at Warwick School and Mason University College, Birmingham , he proceeded to Glasgow where he held a Carnegie Research Scholarship; graduated MB, Ch.B (Glasgow), 1904, and was employed in studying the helminthic material (relating to the study of parasitic worms) brought back by the Scottish Antarctic Expedition. A year later Patrick Manson recruited him to direct the newly created Department of Helminthology in the new tropical school. In 1907 he proceeded to Cairo to study under Professor Looss, a famous helminthologist in the University of Cairo and took part in the Egyptian Government's helminthological survey in Uganda. There he shot elephants and described several new species of intestinal nematodes from this great pachyderm. In 1909 he served as helminthologist to the Grouse Diseases Enquiry Committee and identified the parasite, Trichostrongylus pergracilis, as the cause of the disease. Leiper became University Professor, 1920 and Courtauld Professor of Helminthology and Director of the Department of Parasitology, London School of Hygiene and tropical Medicine.

He remained connected to the School until his death in 1969; in the early years at the School he travelled extensively, making essential contributions to the knowledge of a number of helminths and their life-cycles, he founded the Journal of Helminthology in 1923 and began planning the Institute of Agricultural Parasitology at Winches Farm near St Albans. Active long after normal retirement age Leiper was acknowledged by colleagues as the man who put helminthology on the map in the twentieth century.

Born 1841, Hafod, Wales, and brought up on the family farm in Pembrokeshire; apprenticed to a local apothecary; aged nineteen moved to London, worked at a chemist in Streatham and then as dispenser to the German Hospital; attended German lectures at University College London; moved to Aberdeen where he qualified in 1867; Army Medical School at Netley, Hampshire, 1868, where at the end of the four-month course passed out first on the list; posted to India in 1869, where he investigated cholera; while studying chyluria (the presence of lymphatic fluid in urine), he discovered minute worms in the urine of one particular patient - subsequently they were identified as Filariidae; in 1872 Lewis found similar worms in a blood sample and when this work was written up Lewis was amazed to discover the original patient setting up the type for its publication by the Government Printing Office in Calcutta. Later he found the mature worm but it had already been discovered independently of him by Joseph Bancroft in Australia. However he discovered and described the first trypanosome, which was named Trypanosoma lewisei after him, in the blood of a mammal; appointed, 1883, Assistant Professor of Pathology at Netley where he introduced practical bacteriology to the curriculum; died of pneumonia, 1886, allegedly as a consequence of a laboratory accident.

W H Russell Lumsden was born, 1914; graduated in science and medicine from the University of Glasgow; studied tropical medicine and hygiene at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, and worked as a research fellow in the Department of Parasitology and Entomology. During World War Two he served in malaria field laboratories of the Royal Army Medical Corps and then spent a year with Patrick Buxton becoming Medical Research Council Senior Fellow in Buxton's department, 1946-1947; joined the Yellow Fever Research Institute at Entebbe, Uganda where he remained until he became Director of the East African Trypanosomiasis Research Organisation (EATRO) from 1957 to 1963. Lumsden was Chair of Medical Protozoology 1968-1979.

George Macdonald was born in Sheffield in 1903, the son of J Smyth Macdonald, Professor of Physiology. George Macdonald graduated MB, Ch.B. at Liverpool in 1924, and adding the DPH in the same year; research assistant at the Sir Alfred Lewis Jones Laboratories in Freetown, Sierra Leone, 1925-1929, followed by 2 years as research officer to the Malaria Survey of India. He returned to England in 1931 to take his MD (Liverpool) and the DPH (London) in 1932; he then moved back to India as Principal Medical Officer to the tea estates of the Mariani Medical Association in Assam. His work there caught the attention of Sir Malcolm Watson, who recruited him as Assistant Director of the Ross Institute in 1937, an appointment which involved serving in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) as malariologist to the Malaria Control Scheme of the tea and rubber estates. He undertook a tour of Malaya with Watson to inspect anti-malaria measures there.

At the outbreak of war in 1939 his commission in the Royal Army Medical Corps led to command of the 1st Malaria Field Laboratory in the Middle East. Later he was advisor to Montgomery during the Allied armies' advance through North Africa and Sicily into Italy. In 1945 he returned to teach tropical hygiene at the Ross Institute, where in 1947 he succeeded Watson (who had retired in 1942) as Director. At the same time he was appointed the first Professor of Tropical Hygiene (University of London) at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He was made Honorary Consultant in Malaria to the Army and in 1955 he was awarded the Darling prize for Malaria.

A member of the World Health Organization expert panel on malaria, Macdonald's strong character and convictions made him an uncompromising opponent in scientific discussion, and he had his enemies within the School; but he was internationally respected and commanded affection as well as loyalty from his own staff. Even during his last year of advancing illness he carried on with research and teaching until his death in December 1967.

Publications: Epidemiology and Control of Malaria (Oxford University Press, London, 1957)

Patrick Manson was born in 1844 and studied medicine at Aberdeen University, passing M.B. and C.M. in 1865. In 1866 he became medical officer of Formosa for the Chinese imperial maritime customs, moving to Amoy in 1871. Here, while working on elephantoid diseases, he discovered in the tissues of blood-sucking mosquitoes the developmental phase of filaria worms. From 1883 to 1889 he was based in Hong Kong, where he set up a school of medicine that developed into the university and medical school of Hong Kong. Returning to London, he became physician to the Seaman's Hospital in 1892. He played a central role in the development of tropical medicine as a distinct discipline, publishing on tropical diseases, being instrumental in the setting up of the London School of Tropical Medicine in 1899, and becoming physician and advisor to the Colonial Office in 1897. He propounded the theory that malaria was propagated by mosquitoes, a theory to be proved by Sir Ronald Ross (1857-1932). He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1900 and awarded CMG, 1900, KCMG in 1903, and GCMG, 1912; he died in 1922.

Sir Philip Henry Manson-Bahr was born in Liverpool in 1881; educated at Rugby and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he specialised in Zoology. Having qualified at the London Hospital in 1907, he married Sir Patrick Manson's daughter, changed his name to Manson-Bahr and devoted the rest of his career to tropical medicine. Having studied filariasis in Fiji at the instigation of Manson, he worked on malaria and sprue in Ceylon before 1914.

During World War One he served with the Royal Army Medical Corps in the Middle East and Egypt, where he worked on schistosomiasis with Hamilton Fairley. He was instrumental in establishing Malaria Diagnosis Stations in forward areas during the war. After demobilisation he was appointed lecturer at the London School of Tropical Medicine and later Senior Physician at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases and Director of Clinical Studies at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (1937-1947). Until his death in 1966, he worked as editor of successive editions of Manson's Tropical Diseases, work later followed up by his eldest son, Clinton Manson-Bahr.

Born 5 Sep 1874; educated Rugby School and King's College, Cambridge; First Class Mechanical Sciences Tripos, Part I 1896, and Part II (with special distinction), 1898; called to Bar, Inner Temple, 1902; subsequently engaged in scientific research; Fellow of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene; organised in 1920, a scheme for mosquito control of Hayling Island; built and equipped the British Mosquito Control Institute, Hayling Island, 1925; died 5 Dec 1949. Publications: Unofficial Mosquito Control in England (1922); Coastal Mosquitoes and their Control (British Association Address, 1925); Principles and Practice of Mosquito Control (1927); The Organization of Mosquito Control Work (Presidential Address in Zoology Section, South-Eastern Union of Scientific Societies, Portsmouth Congress, 1930); The British Mosquitoes (1938); The Morphology and Biology of Culex molestus (1944).

In 1925, the Mott Clinic, a special unit for malaria therapy, was established at Horton Hospital, Epsom, Surrey. Patients were treated by infection with one or other species of malaria parasite, and the centre was responsible for providing infective material for use in hospitals throughout Great Britain and Ireland. The Mott Clinic became known as the Ministry of Health Malaria Laboratory, until [1952] when it became the Malaria Reference Laboratory. It was under the umbrella of the newly established Public Health Laboratory Service. P G Shute was Assistant Director of the Laboratory, 1944-1973, with Sir Gordon Covell as its Director. The Laboratory later moved from Epsom to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, becoming known as the Health Protection Agency Malaria Reference Laboratory.

Sir Shirley Foster Murphy was born in 1848 and educated University College School and Guy's Hospital. Murphy was Vice President of Royal Sanitary Institute, Society of Medical Officers of Health, Epidemiological Section Royal Society of Medicine and Royal Statistical Society and examiner in Public Health, Royal Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons. He was a Bissett Hawkins Medallist, Royal College of Physicians; Jenner Medallist, Royal Society of Medicine; Medical Officer of Health, Administrative County of London and a member of Royal Commission on Tuberculosis. Murphy was knighted in 1904; awarded Knight Commander Order of the British Empire, 1919, and became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. Murphy died in 1923.

Lionel Everard Napier was born in 1888 and educated at St John's School, Leatherhead and St Bartholomew's Hospital. Napier became a member and licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians in 1914 and served in World War One, 1915-1918.

Napier worked as consultant on Tropical Diseases, Ministry of Pensions; Medical Editor, Caxton Publishing Company; editor of the Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and Professor of Tropical Medicine and Director of School of Tropical Medicine, Calcutta. Napier's work was recognised when he was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, 1940 and when he was appointed Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire, 1942. Napier died in 1957.

Born Haworth, Yorkshire, 10 Feb 1857; educated in Haworth and Keighley; entered St Thomas' Hospital, London, 1875; graduated MB, London, 1880; MD, London, 1881; resident at St Thomas and General Practitioner, Clapham, London; appointed part-time Medical Officer of Health (MOH) for the parish of Clapham, 1884; appointed MOH for Brighton, 1888; conducted research in epidemiology, particularly relating to tuberculosis, scarlet fever, and diphtheria; gave Milroy lectures at the Royal College of Physicians on The Natural History and Affinities of Rheumatic Fever', 1895; FRCP London, 1898; President, Society of Medical Officers of Health, 1900-1901; appointed Principal Medical Officer, Local Government Board, 1908; served for ten years in this post dealing particularly with tuberculosis, maternity and child-welfare, and venereal diseases; served on Army Sanitary Committee with rank of Lt Col, Royal Army Medical Corps, 1914-1918; knighted, 1917; also Examiner in Public Health to the University of Cambridge, Examiner in State Medicine, University of London, Examiner in Preventive Medicine, University of Oxford, and Consulting Medical Officer Westminster and Battersea Training Colleges; served on General Medical Council, 1909-1919; retired 1919; Lecturer on Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, 1920-1921; continued to write and lecture on public health, with visits to other countries, including the Soviet Union in 1933; died, Worthing, 17 May 1943. Publications: Hygiene (1884); School Hygiene (1887); The Elements of Vital Statistics (1889);Vital Statistics of Peabody Buildings' Journal of the Statistical Society (1891); The Alleged Increase of Cancer', with G. King (Proceedings of the Royal Society, 1893); Natural History and Affinities of Rheumatic Fever (Milroy Lecture, 1895); Epidemic Diphtheria: a Research on the Origin and Spread of the Disease from an International Standpoint (1898); The Prevention of Phthisis, with special reference to its Notification to the MOH (1899);An Inquiry into the Principal Causes of the Reduction of the Death-Rate from Phthisis' Journal of Hygiene (1906); The Prevention of Tuberculosis (1908); The Brighton Life Tables, 1881-1890 and 1891-1923; The Ministry of Health (1925); Evolution of Preventive Medicine (1927); The Story of Modern Preventive Medicine (1929); International Studies on the Relation between the Private and Official Practice of Medicine (3 vols, 1931); Medicine and the State with J A Kingsbury (1932); American Addresses on Health and Insurance (1920); Red Medicine with J. A. Kingsbury (1934); Fifty Years in Public Health (1935); The Last Thirty Years in Public Health (1936).

The Pellagra Investigation Committee was established in 1910, owing to the spread of the disease Pellagra (an ailment of the skin), in several parts of the British Empire and the uncertainty surrounding causation. It was decided that a scientific enquiry should be made into the etiology of pellagra. The Committee consisted of representatives from London School of Tropical Medicine, notably including James Cantlie, Honorary Secretary and Treasurer of the Committee and C W Daniels, Director of the School and other academic and prominent individuals including San Giuliano, Italian Ambassador; Professor William Osler, Regius Professor of Medicine, Oxford University and Dr Dawson Williams, editor of the British Medical Journal. An additional Advisory Sub-Committee was formed of members including Professor Ronald Ross, Professor of Tropical Medicine at the University of Liverpool; Sir Patrick Manson, Medical Advisor to the Colonial Office and E E Austen, Department of Zoology, British Museum.

The Committee intended to raise a fund of £1000 to pay expenses for Dr Louis Sambon, Lecturer at London School of Tropical Medicine, to travel to a pellagrous area to study the topographical distribution and epidemiology of the disease. Sambon intended to discover whether a connection existed between the disease and the sand fly (Simulium) by studying the disease in the lower animals and man, establishing whether pellagra could be defined as belonging to the group of protozoal diseases.

On 20th March 1910 Sambon travelled to Italy. Much work was carried out in an attempt to gain the funds needed to complete research, as at the time of Sambon's departure only a fifth of the necessary funds had been raised and more was needed in order to facilitate the completion of his investigations. Whilst in Italy, Sambon established that, contrary to previous theories surrounding pellagra, its spread was not caused by mouldy maize but rather transmitted via a bite to the human from a gnat (simulium vorans).

Max Joseph von Pettenkofer was born in southern Germany in 1818; attended high school in Munich and then studied pharmacy, natural science and medicine, qualifying with a Phd in medicine, surgery and midwifery, 1843. Pettenkofer then applied to join Liebig's laboratory at Giessen, having to wait two years to enter. During these two years he studied at Würzberg, devising the test for bile acid that bears his name and started research into meat juices which inspired Liebig to investigate them.

Pettenkofer left Giessen to seek better-paid employment in Munich; was appointed Extraordinary Professor of Pathological Chemistry at the University of Munich, 1847 and was promoted to Ordinary Professor 8 years later. Pettenkofer became Chief of the Court Pharmacy and Apothecary to the Court, 1850 and began investigating John Snow's thesis that cholera and typhoid were water-borne, following epidemics in Munich. Results of his investigation convinced him that the cause lay in the moisture content of the soil which varied with the rise and fall of ground water. Despite his fallacious theories Pettenkofer's sanitary work improved the health of Munich. Pettenkofer refused to believe in the germ theory and is said to have drunk a vial of water contaminated by Vibrio cholerae which was sent to him by Robert Koch, assuring Koch that he remained in his usual good health. There is a theory that this was a death wish in disguise as he later committed suicide in 1901.

Publications: Cholera: how to prevent and resist it (Baillière Tindall, & Cox, London, 1883); Outbreak of cholera among convicts : an etiological study of the influence of dwelling, food, drinking-water, occupation, age, state of health, and intercourse upon the course of cholera in a community living in precisely the same circumstances (Asher, London, 1876) and The value of health to a city: two lectures delivered in 1873 (Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1941).

William Norman Pickles, born 6 March 1885 in Leeds; educated at Leeds Grammar School and studied medicine at the medical school of the then Yorkshire College. In his third year he proceeded with his clinical studies at the Leeds General Infirmary, where he qualified as a licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries in 1909. After serving as resident obstetric officer at the Infirmary, he began a series of temporary jobs and locums in general practice. In 1910 he graduated MB BS London and became MD in 1918. His first visit to Aysgarth, Yorkshire, was as a locum for Dr Hime in 1912. After serving as a ship's doctor on a voyage to Calcutta, he returned to Aysgarth later that year as second assistant to Dr Hime. In 1913 he and the other assistant Dean Dunbar were able to purchase the practice. Pickles served as general practitioner in Aysgarth until he retired in 1964. His only break was when, interrupted by World War One, he served as surgeon-lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteers.

In 1926 Pickles read and was inspired by 'The Principles of Diagnosis and Treatment in Heart Affections' by Sir James Mackenzie, who had made many important contributions to medical knowledge from his general practice in Burnley. An epidemic of catarrhal jaundice broke out in Wensleydale in 1929 affecting two hundred and fifty people out of a population of five thousand seven hundred. Pickles was able to trace the whole epidemic to a girl who he had seen in bed on the morning of a village fete and who he never thought would get up that day. In this enclosed community Pickles was able to trace and to establish the long incubation for this disease of 26 to 35 days. He published an account of the epidemic in the British Medical Journal, 24 May 1930. Two years later he published record of an outbreak of Sonne dysentery and in 1933 he recorded in the British Medical Journal the first out break of Bornholm disease (Epidemic Myalgia). His first published medical paper, on Vincent's disease, was published in the Royal Naval Medical Journal in 1918.

In 1935 Pickles described some of his work to the Royal Society of Medicine. After this meeting a leading article in the British Medical Journal stated 'It may mark the beginning of a new era in epidemiology'. Major Greenwood, an outstanding epidemiologist of the time, suggested that he should write a book on his observations, which was published in 1939 as Epidemiology in Country Practice. It became a medical classic [and is still in print today], establishing Pickles's reputation. It showed how a country practice could be a field laboratory with unique opportunities for epidemiologists.

Pickles was Milroy lecturer at the Royal College of Physicians of London (1942) and Cutter lecturer at Harvard University (1948). In 1946 he shared the Stewart prize of the British Medical Association with Major Greenwood, in 1953 the Bisset-Hawkins medal of the Royal College of Physicians, and in 1955 he was elected an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and was awarded the first James Mackenzie medal. He was honoured with an Honorary Doctorate of Science from Leeds University in 1950, and in 1957 was appointed CBE. He became the first President of the College of General Practitioners in 1953, a post he held until 1956. He sat on numerous committees including the General Health Services Council and Register General's Advisory Committee and lectured extensively both at home and abroad. Pickles died 2 March 1969.

Born 18 Jan 1868; educated Tavistock Grammar School, Devon County School, and Plymouth College; entered St Mary's Hospital Medical School, London, 1886; FRCS and MB, BS (London), 1892; entered Indian Medical Service, 1893; MD (London), 1897; MRCP, 1898; on return to India, lent to the veterinary department for research, Múktesar, where he made important discoveries on the control of rinderpest in cattle by inoculation and on transmission of equine trypanosomiasis (surra) in horses and camels; posted to the Bengal civil medical department, Calcutta, 1900; Professor of Pathology, Medical College Calcutta, 1906; undertook research on the effects of antimony on the parasite of kala-azar, sea snake venom, and the effects of emetine on amoebic dysentery; also introduced major improvements in treatment of amoebic abscess of the liver by aseptic aspiration, and in cholera by the intravenous infusion of sterile solution of blood salts (known as 'Rogers Fluid'); investigated efficacy of chaulmoogra oil on leprosy and encouraged research into a cure for leprosy; instrumental in foundation of the Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine, and in foundation of the British Empire Leprosy Relief Association, 1923; knighted, 1914; elected Fellow of the Royal Society, 1916; left India, 1920; retired from Indian Medical Service, 1921; appointed lecturer at the London School of Tropical Medicine; appointed member of the India Office Medical Board, 1922, and its President, 1928; Secretary of the Research Defence Society; retired and given honorary rank of Major General, 1933; President Royal Society of Tropical Medicine, 1933-1935. Selected publications: Fevers in the Tropics (1907); Cholera and its treatment (1911); Bowel diseases in the Tropics (1921); Leprosy with Ernest Muir (1925); Recent Advances in Tropical Medicine (1928); Tropical Medicine with JWD Megaw (1930); Happy Toil (1950), numerous scientific papers in medical journals and Royal Society publications on fevers, snake venoms, liver abscesses, tuberculosis, leprosy; kala-azar, cholera and dysenteries.

Born Almora, India, 13 May 1857; entered Springhill School, 1869; entered St Bartholomew's Hospital medical school, London, 1874; MRCS, 1879; engaged as a ship's surgeon; passed LSA and entered Indian Medical Service, 1881; held temporary appointments either attached to Madras regiments or doing duty at station hospitals in Madras and Burma, 1881-1886; developed interests in literature, poetry and mathematics; commenced special study of malaria, 1892; introduced to (Sir) Patrick Manson, 1894, and developed interests in aetiology of malaria; undertook experimental verification of mosquito theory of malaria, 1895; discovered means of transmission of malaria parasites in man by anopholes mosquitoes, 1897-1898; leader of expedition which found malaria-bearing mosquitoes in West Africa, 1899, and laid down methods for large-scale malaria reduction; retired from Indian Medical Service with rank of Major, 1899; lecturer in tropical medicine, 1899-1902, and subsequently Professor of Tropical Medicine, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, 1902-1912; appointed Physician for Tropical Diseases, King's College Hospital, 1912; Professor of Tropical Sanitation, University of Liverpool, 1912-1917; appointed Consultant in Malaria, War Office, 1917; appointed Consultant in Malaria, Ministry of Pensions, 1925; Director in Chief, Ross Institute and Hospital for Tropical Diseases, Putney, 1926-1932 (the Ross Institute combined with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in Dec 1933); conducted numerous expeditions to malarial countries and published extensively on epidemiology of malaria elected Fellow of the Royal Society, 1901; awarded Nobel Prize for Medicine, 1902; knighted 1911; Vice-President and Royal Medallist of the Royal Society; President Society of Tropical Medicine; Editor of Science Progress, 1913-1932; died, Ross Institute, 16 Sep 1932. Selected publications: novel The Child of Ocean (1889); Philosophies, Psychologies, and other Poems; novel, The Revels of Orsera; The Prevention of Malaria (1910); Memoirs (1923); Poems (1928); Studies on Malaria (1928); Fables and Satires (1930); In Exile (1931); Lyra Modulatu (1931); five mathematical works (1929-1931); The Child of Ocean (1932).

The Ross Institute and Hospital for Tropical Diseases was opened in 1926 on Putney Heath by the Prince of Wales in recognition of the work of Sir Ronald Ross (1857-1932), malariologist. The main focus of the Institute was the study of the nature and treatment, propagation and prevention of tropical disease. Due to financial problems arising after Ross' death in 1932, the Institute was incorporated into the London School in 1934, eventually to become the School's Department of Tropical Hygiene.

The hospital became the Ross Ward of the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in central London. The Institute added new dimensions to the School's existing departments and brought with it wide-ranging interests in overseas industries from Indian tea plantations to Anglo-Iranian oil companies who requested advice from the Institute on public health and disease prevention for staff in the tropics. The School has undergone several reorganisations since the 1950s which has resulted in the Institute losing its separate identity through its absorption by the School.

Born, 1874; educated Mercers' and City of London School and University College London; received his clinical training at St Bartholomew's and St Thomas' Hospitals, qualifying MRCS, LRCP in 1897, after which he held the appointments of house-physician at St Thomas' and resident medical officer at Teignmouth, Dawlish and Newton Abbot Infirmary; after taking the London MB in 1900, he served in the Royal Army Medical Corps with the South African Field Force during the early days of the Boer War, there he isolated the diphtheria bacillus from veld sores and has the claim of being the first to discover this infection of the skin; stayed in South Africa until 1902, gaining the Queen's Medal with five clasps.

He entered the Colonial Service and in 1910 accepted the appointment of Government bacteriologist and pathologist in Jamaica, where he developed an interest in tropical medical problems; while there he discovered that vomiting sickness was due to poisoning by unripe ackee fruit which he found to be highly toxic and described the cysts of Entamoeba histolytica.

He took the DPH of the Irish Royal Colleges, with honours, in 1913; during World War One he served as pathologist at the Cambridge Hospital, Aldershot, in charge of a mobile laboratory, with the rank of honorary captain in the RAMC; after demobilization he became Milner Research Fellow in comparative pathology at the London School of Tropical Medicine and obtained DTM&H (Cambridge); went to Hong Kong as Government bacteriologist and pathologist where he did valuable work on tuberculosis among the poorer class Chinese and gained a great knowledge of morbid anatomy; returned to England in 1922 and became pathologist to the Zoological Society of London, here he compared his 300 post-mortem studies of fatal human cases in Hong Kong with similar studies of animals dying of tuberculosis in the Zoological Gardens; results published by the Medical Research Council in 1929 and threw new light on the pathology of the disease; also a lecturer on tropical diseases at the Westminster Board and Liverpool University; medical secretary to the Colonial Medical Research Committee, 1928-1930; elected a member of the Royal College of Physicians of London in 1916, and a fellow in 1925; elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1917; KCMG in 1941; Fellow of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in 1911, becoming President 1943-1945; appointed assistant director of the Bureau of Hygiene and Tropical Diseases, 1930, becoming director in 1935, holding the appointment until 1942.

In 1937-38 he delivered the FitzPatrick Lectures before the Royal College of Physicians, discussing the conquest of disease in the Tropics, these lectures formed the basis of his best known work: The History of Tropical Medicine, published in two volumes in 1939.

The Centre for Sexual and Reproductive Health Research forms part of Department of Public Health and Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Percy George Shute was born 1894. He joined the 10th Devon regiment, 1914, which led to his first experience of tropical diseases, as he contracted dysentery and was invalided to England in 1917. He worked at a pathology laboratory under the malariologist, Sir Ronald Ross whilst convalescing, who taught him how to stain malaria parasites and dissect mosquitoes. Shute was later employed in the eradication from Britain's civilian population of malaria; went to Vienna, where he learned the techniques of malaria treatment for general paralysis of the insane from Professor Julius Wagner-Jauregg, 1922 and was later involved in the establishment of the Mott Clinic (Malaria Reference Library), at Horton Hospital in Essex, 1925, where he worked until retirement, becoming an authority on malaria and the British mosquito.

Shute became the Assistant Director of the Malaria Reference Library, 1944-1973 and spent some time working within the Department of Entomology at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 1950s. Shute died 26th January 1977.

Publications include: Laboratory technique for the study of malaria by Percy G. Shute and Majorie E. Maryon (J. & A. Churchill, London, 1960).

The Sleeping Sickness Bureau was founded in June 1908 at the Royal Society, under the direction of Arthur Bagshawe. It was established as a central bureau to collate and offer information on current research and control measures in sleeping sickness. It soon became apparent that sleeping sickness was not the only disease in need of attention; in 1911 the Kala azar Bulletin was published and in 1912 the Bureau moved to the Imperial Institute and was renamed the Tropical Diseases Bureau.

From 1914 onwards the Bureau, maintaining a comprehensive international sphere of interests, emphasised a growing awareness of sanitation as a necessary factor in control of disease in tropical latitudes by publishing also a Bulletin of Hygiene.

In 1920, the Bureau moved to share the new premises of the London School of Tropical Medicine in Endsleigh Gardens and in 1925 changed its name to the Bureau of Hygiene and Tropical Diseases. It moved in 1929 to the new School building in Keppel and was housed in the London School until 1993 when it became part of Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux International (CABI).

John Gordon Thomson was born in Linlithgowshire; graduated with an MA from Edinburgh University in 1903, and 5 years later qualified in medicine. After house appointments, he went to Liverpool as research student in tropical medicine in 1910, becoming pathologist to the Royal Southern Hospital and research fellow at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. With a Beir Memorial research fellowship he went to the London School of Tropical Medicine in 1914; went to Egypt with Professor Robert Leiper on the bilharzia mission as Captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps, 1915. Later in the war he and his brother, Dr David Thomson, who had both enjoyed the patronage of Ronald Ross when they first went to Liverpool, worked at the War Office malaria research laboratories. After the war he was appointed Chair of Protozoology at the London School where he was a gifted teacher, maintaining a collection of cultures of trypanosomes and other pathological organisms and blood films for teaching purposes.

In 1926 he was exchange lecturer in protozoology at the School of Hygiene, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. In 1936 he gave a series of lectures at Singapore for the League of Nations Special Course on Malaria. He travelled widely in South America and other tropical countries. In 1921-1922 he undertook two expeditions to Rhodesia to study blackwater fever. In 1926 he was in the West Indies, Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Panama.

His publications include a book with Andrew Robertson, Protozoology for Medical Men. His contributions to the knowledge of blackwater fever were regarded as standard, while his methods of enumerating malaria parasites in the blood and cultivating these organisms were of great importance. Thomson died in 1937.

William Whiteman Carlton Topley was born in Lewisham in 1886; graduated BA at St John's College, Cambridge, 1907 and qualified MB B.Ch. from St Thomas's Hospital, 1911. By then he was already an Assistant Director of the Pathology Department at Charing Cross Hospital, London. Always keen on research, war-time experience of a severe epidemic of typhus in Serbia turned his mind to epidemiology, and in 1922 he was appointed Professor of Bacteriology in the University of Manchester.

By 1922, Topley was developing the study of experimental epidemiology, in which he came to rely on the statistical contributions of Major Greenwood. In 1927 both men were appointed to new chairs at the new London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Their collaboration and friendship continued throughout their time at the School, until the threat of war catapulted Topley into organising the Emergency Public Health Laboratory Service (EPHLS). With his younger friend and associate, Graham Wilson, Topley published in 1929 the first of many editions of their classic text, Principles of Bacteriology and Immunity. In 1941 he took over as Secretary to the Agricultural Research Council. War-time stress and a family history of coronary disease caused his sudden death in February 1944, 2 days after his 58th birthday.

Born 1896, graduated Manchester University; served in World War One in Egypt and the Palestine Campaign 1915-19 (wounded at Gaza 1917); Graduating MB Ch.B in 1924; joined the East African Medical Service in 1927; became Tuberculosis Research Officer in Tanganyika in 1930; at the Bureau of Hygiene and Tropical Diseases (he took the DTM&H in 1941) from 1938; Director of the Bureau, 1942 to 1961; also consultant to Counties Public Health Laboratories, London, 1962-76.

Sir Graham Selby Wilson was born on 10 September 1895 in Newcastle upon Tyne and educated at various schools, including Mill Hill School and Epsom College, and entered King's College London, 1912. During World War One he joined the clinical school at Charing Cross Hospital, where he qualified MRCS, LRCP in 1916; later joining the Royal Army Medical Corps serving as a captain and specialist in bacteriology, until 1920. He then joined the department headed by William Whiteman Carlton Topley (1886-1944), at Charing Cross Hospital and moved to the University of Manchester in 1923.

Wilson became reader in bacteriology at the University of London, 1927 and was appointed Professor of Bacteriology as Applied to Hygiene at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 1930. Prior to World War Two, Wilson assisted Topley in creating plans for an emergency bacteriological service, to be mobilized in the event of war to control expected epidemics of infectious disease. Wilson assisted in the development of the Emergency Public Health Laboratory Service (EPHLS) and was appointed its director, 1941-1963.

Among his achievements Wilson was elected a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, 1930; fellow of the Royal Society in 1978; knighted, 1962, and received an honorary LLD from Glasgow University, 1962. He died on 5 April 1987 in the Westminster Hospital, London.

Publications include: The bacteriological grading of milk By G S Wilson and others (H M Stationery Office, London, 1935) and The hazards of immunization: based on University of London Heath Clark lectures, 1966, delivered at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (Athlone P, London, 1967).

Prior to the introduction of the GPO's mail coach service in 1784, the mail was conveyed by horse riders or mail cart on the longer routes out of London and on foot on some country services. The service was slow and vulnerable to attacks by armed robbers. In 1782 John Palmer of Bath put forward his scheme for conveying the mail by stage coach. Rejected in 1783 by the Postmasters General, a trial was finally approved in June 1784, with the support of William Pitt, Chancellor of the Exchequer. The experiment on the Bristol-Bath-London road in August 1784 was a success and Palmer began to organise further mail coach services in 1785. He was appointed Surveyor and Comptroller General of the Post Office in 1786 and presided over the expansion of the service throughout England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. By 1790 all the most important routes had been covered and many towns had a daily delivery and collection of mail by coach. The full scheme involved 42 mail coach routes.

The mail coach service was almost immediately affected by the arrival of the railways in the 1830s. The GPO quickly took advantage of this new and faster method of transport to replace the mail coaches. The last of the London based coaches ceased in 1846, although this method of conveyance continued for cross post services between some provincial towns until the 1850s. The last coach in the Midlands ran out of Manchester in 1858. Mail coaches lasted longest in those area which railways were slow to reach, such as Cornwall, Mid Wales, the Peak District and far North of Scotland. One of the last mail routes to be used, to Thurso in northern Scotland, ceased after the opening of the Highland Railway in 1874. In some remote parts of Scotland railways were never built and horse drawn carriage continued into the twentieth century, until replaced by motor vehicles.

Post Office experiments with motor transport began in the 1890s. Until the end of the First World War services were provided mainly by private contractors. In 1919 the Post Office introduced its own fleet of motor vehicles.

Rowland Hill is remembered today as a key reformer of the British Postal Service. In 1840, he introduced the Universal Penny Postage which decreed that letters of a given weight should all cost the same to send, regardless of the distance. For example, letters up to ½ ounce cost 1d (14gms/0.5p) to send and postage was prepaid, using the world's first adhesive stamp.

He first advocated his plan in a pamphlet published in 1837 and the system was recommended for adoption by a Committee of the House of Commons the following year and put into effect in 1840. Hill was appointed as adviser to the Treasury to introduce the postal reforms. He strove to create a more efficient postal service that everyone could afford. His reforms ranged from encouraging people to insert letter boxes in their front doors to creating London's first postal districts. The appointment was terminated following a change of government in 1842. He was recalled to the Post Office in 1846 and appointed Secretary to the Postmaster General, and succeeded Colonel Maberly as Secretary to the Post Office in 1854. He retired from Office in 1864 and died in August, 1879.

Sir John Tilley began his career with the Post Office, more specifically the Secretary's Office, in 1829, when he entered that department as a Clerk on 19th February. At that time the Secretary's Office had a very small workforce headed by the then Secretary Sir Francis Freeling. Seven months after Tilley joined that department it transferred to St Martin's le Grand, London.

Tilley had a very successful career with the Post Office and rose quickly through the ranks. By 1838, aged only 26, he had been made a Surveyor, and on 11 October 1848 he was appointed to the post of Assistant Secretary. On 15 March 1864, he succeeded the then Secretary Sir Rowland Hill, the postal reformer, of whom he had always been a staunch supporter. Tilley was made a CB in 1871, and upon his retirement in 1880 the honour of KCB was bestowed upon him.

The system of 'minuting' papers submitted to the Postmaster General by the Secretary to the Post Office for a decision (ie numbering the papers, and separately copying a note of the paper as a 'minute' into volumes indexed by subject) was introduced in 1793. It remained in use by the Post Office Headquarters registry until 1973.

Until 1921, several different major minute series were in use: that concerned with the Packet Service (POST 29), and those concerned with England and Wales (POST 30), Ireland (POST 31) and Scotland (POST 32). From 1790 until 1841, parallel 'Report' series were in use by the Secretary (POST 39 and 40).

In 1921, the several different minute series were replaced by a single all-embracing series (POST 33). This was suspended in 1941 as a wartime measure when a Decimal Filing system came into use (POST 102), but was resurrected in 1949. In 1955 the registration of Headquarters files began to be decentralised under several local registries serving particular departments, although the 'minuting' of cases considered worthy of preservation, and the assimilation of later cases with earlier existing minuted bundles, continued until 1973.

The duty of the Receiver General's office was the balancing of cash derived from the income and expenditure of the Post Office. The Receiver General was appointed independently and took responsibility for cash from the hands of the Postmaster General. He took receipt of all money paid into the Department, and paid costs directly from these funds.

Sources of income included payments received from the Postmasters, Inland Office, Foreign Office, Letter Receivers, Letter Carriers and charges levied on incoming foreign letters.

Outgoing payments were mainly for wages, allowances, pensions and normal postal service costs. The balance of cash was transferred to the Exchequer.

The class is comprised, for the most part, of Entry Books of Correspondence which contain authorities for acceptance and payment of monies by probate of wills, letters of administration, powers of attorney, bankruptcy, appointment of assignees, incidental payments, packet boat expenses and warrants for payments of annuities etc.

The position of Receiver General tended to overlap with another prominent financial position, that of Accountant General. The Accountant General was appointed by the Postmaster General to keep an account of all revenue in the Post Office. Due to this overlap the posts were finally merged in 1854, and 1854 is the date of the last entry book in this series.

No other record of the Receiver General's functions exists apart from the material in this class.

Over the centuries there have been hundreds of different ways that messages have been carried and sent. By the early 1830s typeprinting of Telegraphs was happening in Europe, and in 1889 an English model of one of these machines was introduced to the Post Office by (Mr) Hughes.

By 1913 the Post Office was looking at ways of improving the speed of its operation and it was not long before the 'Teleprinter' was introduced by Creed. This machine possessed a typewriter keyboard and could be operated to approximately sixty five words a minute. This machine printed the Telegram ready for delivery. This was a great boost to the efficiency of the system. It was adopted by the Post Office and used by its telegraph services.

The Post Office wanted to encourage the use of the Telegraph and in the early days reduced rates and employed more operators in order to reduce delay. They improved the working areas, and introduced motor cycles to speed up delivery. By the 1930s they were introducing beautifully decorated Greeting cards for sending on special occasions. These continued until the late 1960s when the numbers being sent reduced.

In the early 1980s and through to the 1990s there was liaison with British Telecom in order to introduce a 'Telemessage Service'. This was similar to the Greetings Telegram and a variety of designs were produced for various events like 'Weddings', '21st Birthday' and 'New Arrival'.

The first Public Relations officer was appointed on 1 October 1933, although an active 'public relations' function existed at least ten years earlier. This was followed by the formation of the Public Relations Department, which was formally established on 25 April 1934, when other changes in headquarters organisation were made.

The Post Office was the first government ministry to form a separate public relations department. In 1934 the first charter of the Public Relations Department stated that the responsibilities of the department were defined as 'being to promote good relations with the public, and to conduct sales and publicity for the services provided by the Post Office' (POST 108/18). The department was so successful that the Home Office borrowed its controller and some other officers in 1938 to plan publicity for air raid precautions. In 1939 some of its staff were seconded to help in establishing the wartime Ministry of Information.

In September 1939 many of the department's remaining staff were dispersed to assist in other government work, but it was soon realised that public relations work was just as necessary in wartime as in peacetime, and the department's operations were revived.

By the 1950s the Department was organised into three main divisions, press and broadcast, publicity, and publications. Press and broadcast was the oldest division of the three, having been established in 1934. From November 1940 it was headed by a specialist with previous experience as a journalist. The division issued news bulletins, and other bulletins on individual matters which were distributed to newspapers, broadcasters and other interested parties. In addition the divisions officers answered a continual flow of enquiries, mainly by telephone, from journalists. The division also organised occasional press conferences for ministers.

The publicity division's main area of responsibility was to ensure that the Post Office was presented in print, display, and film with the highest possible standard of modern art and technique.

The publications division was responsible for compiling and editing the various Post Office publications. These included the 'Post Office Guide', 'Post offices in the United Kingdom', 'London Post offices and Streets', and 'Postal Addresses'.

During the 1990s the department was renamed as Communication Services and was positioned as part of Royal Mail Group centre. Four directors, reporting to a director of Communication Services, were responsible for: Regional Communications; Communications Consultancy; Creative Services; and Commercial matters.

Communication Services activities and functions were reviewed and redesigned, and changes made to resourcing levels. Under the new structure Communication Services was organised and run more like an external agency with much closer attention paid to costs and to profits. The intention was to expand the range of services offered, to support the Post Office aim of being recognised as the complete distribution company, and to get much closer to the users of its services.

Much of the artwork in the series was commissioned by the Public Relations Department, which was first created in 1934, under the first Post Office Public Relations Officer, Stephen Tallents.

Right from the conception of the department, it assumed responsibility for commissioning designs for posters, which it considered to be a vital part of Post Office publicity, it did this initially in consultation with a 'Poster Advisory Group' but, from 1937, it operated in its own right. The department approached leading artists for the production of posters of two kinds, known respectively as 'Prestige' and 'Selling'. 'Prestige' posters fell into two categories: those specially prepared for distribution to schools and those for display in the public offices of Crown Post Offices and non-public offices in Post Office buildings, they were intended to be more formal in style, eye catching rather than persuasive. 'Selling' posters had a direct 'selling' appeal and were intended to persuade the beholder to use a particular service or buy a particular product.

The Post Office Greetings Telegram Service was introduced in July 1935 as a means of revitalising the telegraph service and the Public Relations Department was involved from the outset, involving itself both in publicising the new service and in commissioning artists to produce designs for the forms themselves. Greetings telegrams were to be associated with special occasions and as such, designs had to be particularly attractive, with an element of luxury, this was encapsulated in the golden envelope designed to accompany the form.

The Public Relations Department underwent several changes in structure throughout the decades following the 1930s, but the production of good publicity literature, both written and visual, continued to be a very important part of its remit. Post Corporation, commissioned artists tended to be less well known and the focus of the posters turned increasingly towards the promotion of special stamp issues and philatelic products.

In the 1990s, the Public Relations Department was renamed as Communication Services and was positioned as part of Royal Mail Group Centre. This signified a change in outlook, with an emphasis on 'hard sell' and the commissioning of advertising agencies to work on individual campaigns for special services and products.

The first ever main line railway opened in 1825 and ran between Stockton and Darlington. In 1827 the use of that railway, and future lines, for carriage of mails was suggested to Secretary Francis Freeling by Thomas Richardson (see POST 11/51). The first conveyance of mail by this method actually occurred on 11 November 1830 on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, less than two months after this second main line had opened (see POST 11/52). The Post Office was quick to take advantage of the new form of transport and in July 1837 mails were conveyed by train from Birmingham to Liverpool on the inaugural service of the Grand Junction Railway (see POST 11/57 and 58). In January 1838 the idea of having special mail carriages was experimented with; a horse box suitably fitted up started running between Birmingham and Liverpool on the Grand Junction in 1838. Proving a success, the first official 'travelling post office' set off from London to Preston on 1 October 1838.

In August 1838 an Act to provide for the conveyance of the mails by railways was passed by Parliament. This enabled the Postmaster General to compel railway companies to carry mails by ordinary or special trains, at such hours as the Postmaster General might direct, together with mail guards and other officers of the Post Office. Companies could also be required to provide carriages fitted up for sorting letters en route. In return, railway companies would receive a payment to be fixed, by arbitration if necessary, for any services and accommodation supplied. This Act provided the foundation for all future arrangements for carrying mails by rail.

Between 1838 and 1848 railways expanded rapidly in Britain and mails were quickly diverted to them from the roads. The London and Birmingham Railway, opened in September 1838, was the first important line to be completed in England and marked the end of the 'Golden Age' of coaching. From 1844, the year of 'railway mania', to 1848, 637 separate lines received their charters from Parliament. Mail coach contractors unable to get passengers essential to their operations where the railway ran a parallel route began giving notice to quit (see POST 11/60 and 61). The south western coaches ceased their runs when the Great Western Railway was completed to Bristol in June 1841. The last horse drawn mail from London, to Norwich via Newmarket, was withdrawn in January 1846. By this time the railway network was becoming moderately complete. However, up to the 1870s railway services in the provinces often operated in connection with mail coaches.

By the 1850s the railway posts were generally known as Travelling Post Offices or Sorting Carriages and a number of trains almost wholly devoted to carrying mail were in operation. (See also POST 18). Over the next seventy years railways contributed significantly to the vast improvement in quality, increase of volume and speed of postal communications within Britain. Serious competition was absent until the widespread use of motor vehicles from the second quarter of the twentieth century.

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On 18th October 1968 Prime Minister Harold Wilson officially opened Girobank - 'the people's bank', or National Giro as it was first known. Part of a Labour Government initiative to provide banking facilities for those people who did not have bank accounts, it was the first bank in the world to be planned and built from its very beginning as a fully computerised unit. The process was overseen by the then Postmaster General, Tony Benn.

Much optimism surrounded the new company and the promotional booklet enthusiastically claimed that, 'Within one or two years the National Giro Centre will be handling the accounts of some 1,200,000 customers, including many large firms and organisations.' At that time there were 23,000 Post Offices in the UK and Girobank provided free banking and credit transfer facilities at each one for six days a week, thereby creating competition for the high street banks. Due to the fact that only 25% of adults had bank accounts the market was considered very penetrable. However, despite its extensive promotion Girobank secured only 110,000 accounts in its first six months and suffered further losses for the next seven years.

Many reasons were put forward as to why the National Giro had not been as successful as predicted. Competition by joint-stock banks and the development of competitive current accounts by other banks had been cited as plausible causes. However, the real issue appeared to be the miscalculation of the difference between the real and actual demands of the customers. Furthermore, the economic growth of the UK had been sluggish since the Second World War and consequently its rate of absorption of new services was painfully slow.

Girobank did, however, benefit greatly from a partnership with the Mercantile Loan Company Ltd. The partnership meant that Giro customers were eligible to apply for Mercantile credit loans and new applications for a Giro account soared as a result.

When the Conservative Government were voted into power in 1970, the future of Girobank looked distinctly shaky as a review of the activities of Girobank was commissioned. By this point Girobank's cumulative losses had reached over £19.7 million and although Giro was granted a reprieve, there was little doubt that it had been a very close call. On 17th November 1971, Christopher Chataway, the Minister for Posts and Telecommunications, declared that Giro should continue but that it must employ a new approach to its practices.

As part of the new approach many structural reforms were implemented during 1972. These included a review of the Tariff structure which doubled the majority of the existing charges and added a charge for debt transactions and later an overhaul of the Rents Scheme, the introduction of the Giro Gold Card, the streamlining of the business, a reduction of the labour force from 3500 to 3000 and a change in the standard 'same day' service to one of a 'next-day' service. The Giro also took on the Postal Order business and began using its International Services to replace the Post Office's own International Money Order Service.

In 1973 a report prepared by Coopers and Lybrand recommended that Giro should implement a formal business planning procedure and annual business plan. The advice was welcomed and the first business plan issued in 1973.

During 1986 postal operations were organised into three separate businesses - Royal Mail Letters, Royal Mail Parcels and Post Office Counters (in addition to National Girobank which remained a separate business unit). National Girobank became independent as a plc in 1988.

Despite the fact that Girobank had managed to overcome its shaky start and that it had grown rapidly to become Britain's sixth biggest bank, it never really shook off its down-market image and, in 1990 it was sold to the Alliance and Leicester Building Society.