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Sir Joseph Austen Chamberlain was born in Birmingham in 1863 and was the elder son of Joseph Chamberlain (1836-1914), industrialist, Mayor of Birmingham, Member of Parliament and several times Minister of the Crown. He was also half-brother to Neville Chamberlain (1869-1940), Prime Minister.
Austen Chamberlain's Parliamentary career spanned 1892-1937, and he was deeply involved in party, national and international politics as the supporter of his father, as a leader in the Conservative/Unionist party and as elder statesman. He held offices including Junior Whip, 1893; Civil Lord of the Admiralty, 1895-1900; Financial Secretary to the Treasury, 1900-1902; Postmaster General, 1902-1903; Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1903-1905 and 1919-1921; Secretary of State for India 1915-1917; Leader of the House and Lord Privy Seal, 1921-1922; Foreign Secretary, 1924-1929, and First Lord of the Admiralty, 1931. Chamberlain was made a knight in 1925 and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1926.
Postgraduate medical education in London is deeply indebted to the Chamberlain family. Joseph Chamberlain was responsible for the foundation in 1899 of the London School of Tropical Medicine for which Sir Austen Chamberlain at a later date raised an endowment fund. Neville Chamberlain, as Minister of Health, laid the foundation stone of the School in 1926 and in 1932, Sir Austen became Chairman of its Court of Governors.
He was a member of the Board of Management of the School and regularly attended the meetings of its Board, giving an immense amount of personal attention both to the business management of the School and to the work of the scientific staff; instrumental in incorporating the Ross Institute in the School, 1934; and worked to secure the School's endowment, donations and subscriptions.
It was perhaps typical of the pains he took to make himself intimate with the affairs of the School that, whatever the other claims on his time might be, he invariably attended the annual Students' dinner and devoted his whole evening to talking with individual students. Sir Austin died in 1937.