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C ouncil N ews

Generous bequest from a
remarkable physician and

trailblazer

Janet Clarke Hall would like to acknowledge with
gratitude the generous bequest made by the late
College Fellow Dr Lynne McArthur Reid (1941)

Born in 1923, Dr Reid received her M.B.B.S. from Melbourne
University in 1946, and went on to become the first
researcher to receive a grant in pathology from the National
Health and Medical Research Council at the Royal Melbourne
Hospital. Lynne McArthur Reid (1941)
13 April 1923 – 5 April 2021
She served later as a Professor of Pathology at Harvard women pioneer whose courage and determination opened
Medical School and Pathologist-in-Chief Emeritus at Children’s the door for women to be appointed to leadership positions
Hospital in Boston. She received numerous commendations and advance women leadership not only in the United States
for her work and held a series of distinguished appointments but around the world.’
in Britain, Australia, and the United States.
Dr Reid’s sizeable bequest to the College will enable us
In the United States she served on the American Heart to provide major scholarships to deserving students for
Association’s Council of Cardiopulmonary Diseases, the generations to come, and we look forward to helping them
National Institutes of Health’s Respiratory and Applied learn more about Dr Reid’s extraordinary achievements and
Physiology Review Group, and the Pulmonology Disease legacy.
Committee of the National Institutes of Health. She also
chaired Harvard’s Joint Committee on the Status of Women. Dr Eleanor Spencer-Regan
Principal
Dr Reid was a staunch advocate of female participation and
achievement in medicine, blazing a trail in her own career,
but just as importantly creating opportunities for other women
in the field. In an interview for the National Institutes of
Health’s Changing the Face of Medicine series she recalled
‘From early on as I advanced my career I wanted to make the
playing field more even for women.’ At the time that Dr Reid
1
moved to Harvard Medical School, where she was the S. Burt
Wolbach Professor of Pathology, many of the scientists who
had worked for her in London were women.

‘And they ran the labs, which was very unusual because at Student Lynne at
that time, mostly men ran labs,’ recounts Rosemary Jones, a Melbourne University
retired Associate Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical in 1942
School who was among the scientists Dr Reid brought with
her from London. 2
1 https://cfmedicine.nlm.nih.gov/physicians/biography_263.html
In 2016, the Massachusetts Medical Society presented Dr Reid 2 https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/05/09/metro/dr-lynne-m-reid-
with the Women Physician Leadership Award. Colleagues 97-groundbreaking-pathologist-who-wanted-make-playing-field-
who nominated her said ‘she will go down in history as a more-even-women/

38 LUCE Number 22 2023