Emeritus Professor Peter M Dunn

Emeritus Professor Peter M Dunn,  2002-2004

Born in Birmingham, Peter was educated at Marlborough College and Cambridge University (St. John’s College).  After graduating in medicine in 1954 he served with the Goorkhar Rifles before returning to posts in Birmingham and settling in Bristol ultimately as the Director of the Academic Neonatal Service, University of Bristol. He was appointed to a Personal Chair in Perinatal Medicine and Child Health, University of Bristol, 1987 and attained extensive British and International awards for his work and publications.  These numbered more than 400 publications mainly on perinatal medicine including 120 on the history of medicine;  contributed to 123 medical reports including preparation of the BPA/RCOG ‘Recommendations for the Improvement of Infant Care during the Perinatal Period in the UK’ (1978).

He was the instigator and activist in establishing this Society.

Professor Andrew Williams,  2005-2007

Professor Andrew N. Williams PhD FRHistS is a consultant community paediatrician, medical historian, archive curator, playwright and film maker. He was trained in paediatrics/ paediatric neurodisability in Birmingham under Dr Geoff Debelle, Dr William Whitehouse and the late Dr S.H. Green.
  • Since 1999,  Andrew has had an honorary affiliation with the History of Medicine Unit, firstly with Professor Robert Arnott and later with Professor Jonathan Reinarz.
  • 2000 he won the ILEA Gowers’ Young Physicians Prize.
  • Since 2002 he has worked as a full time NHS consultant community paediatrician at Northampton General Hospital. He has published on paediatrics and child health between the 16th–21st centuries.
  • 2004 Andrew established the world’s first paediatric Virtual Academic Unit (VAU) taking Dr Thomas Willis’ (1621-75) idea of an ‘Invisible college’ and placing it within a 21st century context. 
  • 2009 PhD in the History of Medicine at the University of Birmingham
  • 2013 the only UK expert reviewer and contributor to the UNICEF sponsored ‘International Charter for Ethical Research Involving Children.' 
  • 2015 won the  WellChild Doctor Award which was presented by HRH Prince Harry. https://youtu.be/7hA5kmP7Ikw.
  • 2018 his short film ‘The Boudiccae’ was shown in the Houses of Parliament, London as part of a successful campaign working with Together for Short Lives. 
  • 2018 appointed a visiting Professor in Medical History, Humanities and Child Health by the University of Northampton.
Andrew is a member of the Global Research on Developmental Disabilities Collaboration.
Emeritus Professor Dan G Young
Emeritus Professor Dan G Young, 2008-2010
One of the founder members of the Society Dan has been active in the committee and as an official of the Society since its inception.  Having retired from being  the Professor of Surgical Paediatrics in Glasgow where he had  served at all levels in the medical structure of the NHS at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children from being a student locum resident in 1954 he has developed further his interest in archives of paediatrics.   With his successor and a colleague from Turkey he has published a book “A History of Surgical Paediatrics” which includes contributions from 28 countries and gives an international reflection on that aspect of paediatrics.

Having been the President of the British Association of Paediatric Surgeons and being an honorary member of a number of national associations he has had a broad experience of the specialty in its secondary stage of development after the Second World War.
Emeritus Professor Lawrence T Weaver, 2011-2012
Lawrence Weaver was the Samson Gemmell Professor of Child Health at the University of Glasgow and a consultant paediatrician at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children at Yorkhill until he retired in 2011. He is now an Honorary Senior Research Fellow of the Centre for the History of Medicine in Glasgow. He has a long-standing interest in the history of medicine, and was a Wellcome Trust Fellow in the Centre for the History of Medicine in 2002, and later joined other members of the Centre in securing a Wellcome Enhancement Award (2004-09) on the History of 20th Century Scottish Child Health. He was a member of the Wellcome Twentieth Century History Group’s Witness Seminar Committee, History of Medicine Funding Committee, and secretary of the British Society for the History of Paediatrics and Child Health from 2008-2011. He has published many articles on the history of infant and child nutrition and, with Dr Iain Hutchison and Professor Malcolm Nicolson, has recently been working on Child Health in Scotland: A History of Glasgow’s Royal Hospital for Sick Children – available here.
Emeritus Professor Denis Gill  MB,BSc,DCH,MRCPI. Hon FRCPCH, 2013-2015
Denis graduated from University College Dublin in 1968. And had post graduate training in Dublin, Bristol, London, Brisbane, Philadelphia. He was Chairman National Immunization Advisory Committee 2008, 2009-2010 and is Emeritus Professor of Paediatrics Royal College of Physicians Ireland; Former Consultant Paediatrician and Paediatric Nephrologist Children’s University Hospital; Former President Confederation of European Specialists in Paediatrics; Author "Paediatric Clinical Examination" (5th ed).
Emeritus Professor Euan Ross, 2016-2018
Euan Ross went to Bristol medical school and after house jobs there went on to Aberdeen in 1963, returning to his Scottish roots. From there he went to Dundee becoming an intensive neonatal care paediatric registrar. He then returned to Bristol in 1968 as Prof Neville Butler’s lecturer. He worked with him on the National Child Developmental study and this led to his career interest in community paediatrics. He went on from Bristol to London where he worked in three medical schools and was part of the research team looking into the issue of vaccine scares and in particular the drop in pertussis vaccine uptake in the 1970s, and this culminated in the National Child Encephalopathy Study. This work led to further studies in epilepsy and a chair at King's College London and the chance to learn and teach in countries from Albania to Zimbabwe, which reinforced his abiding interest in the history and geography of medicine. Peter Dunn introduced him to the BSHPCH.