Page 34 - Luce 2021

C ouncil N ews

Vale Lynne McArthur Reid (1941) 13 April 1923 – 5 April 2021

College Fellow Dr Lynne McArthur Reid (1941) was rightly
famous in the United States and the United Kingdom as a
pioneer for women in medicine. Fewer Australians know her
story – but she was always proud of her Australian heritage
and her College connection. In 2009, I was delighted to meet
with Lynne at Harvard University where she was a generous
host and we talked about her student days and career.

Lynne was born in Melbourne, among a generation of
Australians deeply touched by the Great War and the Second
World War to come. Her decision to study medicine was Dr Reid and Dr Powell together at the Harvard Club in 2009
influenced in part by memories of her father, whose arm was
saved after a serious war wound through medical intervention. Lynne’s first academic appointment was as a research assistant
In our discussions she vividly recalled the influence of Sir at the Institute of Diseases of the Chest at London University.
Albert Coates (with Sir ‘Weary’ Dunlop a hero of medical She was appointed the first female professor of experimental
efforts for POWs on the Thai-Burma Railway) on her training pathology at London University in 1967 and was made Dean
at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. of the Cardiothoracic Institute at London University in 1973 –
another first for a woman.
Having spent time in the United Kingdom in the 1930s,
Lynne’s family returned to Australia via Canada and America Dr Reid arrived in Boston in 1976 after being recruited
shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War. In 1941 from England by Harvard University. As she recalled in
she entered College on a minor scholarship and commenced conversation with me, being ‘poached’ by the US was
her studies in medicine. While in JCH Lynne was drawn something of a national cause célèbre in the UK at the
towards dramatic pursuits: the 1941 Fleur-de-Lys records that time, with the issue even drawing debate in the House of
she was ‘well cast’ as Ada in The Late Christopher Bean (an Commons. But having arrived at the Harvard Medical School
English adaptation of René Fauchois’ Prenez Garde à la with a contingent she brought with her from her UK lab,
Peinture); also penning ‘bright dialogue’ with Jenny Pascheove Lynne had no regrets, quickly building a strong network of
for their play Ladies in Retirement which ‘right royally’ new colleagues and friends, and a growing international
entertained the College. Perhaps unsurprisingly Lynne was reputation in thoracic medicine.
elected Secretary of the Janet Clarke Hall Dramatic Club in
1942. As the author of over 500 publications encompassing the
full spectrum of human lung disease, Lynne was awarded in
Lynne graduated from the School of Medicine in 1991 the Edward Livingston Trudeau Medal, recognition by
1946, completing her internship and residency before gaining the American Thoracic Society of her remarkable contribution
a postdoctoral research fellowship at the RMH from 1949 to education, research and clinical care, expanding the
to 1951, during which time she was a College tutor. In 1950 ‘definition of a great physician’. Yet it was probably her
she served as a Committee member of the Janet Clarke Hall support for women in science and medicine for which she
Society. will be most remembered, endowing scholarships in the
United States, and leaving a generous bequest in her Will to
‘From early on, as I advanced my career, I wanted to make Janet Clarke Hall.
the playing field more even for women. This attitude was by
no means universal even among women. It is good to see Damian Powell
that, in general, support is stronger now,’ Lynne reflected in
an interview in Changing the Face of Medicine.* She quickly *https://cfmedicine.nlm.nih.gov/physicians/biography
became an inspiration and a leader for women pursuing _263.html
careers in medical research.

Appointment of Principal of Janet Clarke Hall

As we reluctantly farewell Dr Eleanor Spencer-Regan, currently Vice-Principal and
Dr Damian Powell, Senior Tutor of St Chad’s College at the University of
gratefully acknowledging all Durham in the UK, is due to arrive with her family in the
he achieved for the College latter half of 2022.
during two decades, it is
important that we also look Holding a doctorate from Durham in twentieth-century
to the future and welcome poetry, Dr Spencer-Regan has won recognition for her
the anticipated arrival of research, teaching and publications, and was awarded
the next Principal of Janet the Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship which took her to
Clarke Hall. Harvard University in 2011. Since 2012, she has been the
34 LUCE Number 20 2021