Lionel Sharples Penrose
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J Med Genet: first published as 10.1136/jmg.11.1.1 on 1 March 1974. Downloaded from Journal of Medical Genetics (1974). 11, 1. Lionel Sharples Penrose (1898-1972) HARRY HARRIS Department of Human Genetics and Biometry, The Galton Laboratory, University College London Lionel Penrose was born in London on 11 June then went off to continue his postgraduate studies 1898. His father James Doyle Penrose (1862-1932) at the University of Vienna. Here he did some who was a portrait painter and his mother Elizabeth work on memory and perception in E. Biihler's Josephine (Peckover) Penrose were both members of laboratory and also had the opportunity of meeting the Society of Friends (Quakers), as their ancestors Sigmund Freud and other leading psychiatrists in- had been for more than 200 years. He was the cluding Wagner Jauregg and Paul Schilder. At second of four brothers. They were brought up this time he attempted to write a thesis on the psy- strictly according to the religious principles of the chology of mathematics, but this did not get very Society of Friends. On Sundays for example no far, and he became more and more interested in the games were allowed nor the reading of fiction, problems posed by abnormal psychology and mental though the study of natural history and of astro- disorder. He came to the conclusion that to enter nomy in particular was encouraged. In later life this field he must qualify in medicine. Decided on though he remained a member of the Society of this course, he returned to Cambridge in 1925 to do Friends he was not particularly zealous about re- the necessary preclinical studies (lst and 2nd MB) ligious meetings. However, his Quaker upbring- and then moved to St Thomas's Hospital, London for ing no doubt played an important part in determin- the clinical work. He obtained his medical degree ing his extreme dislike of show and pretentiousness in 1928. At St Thomas's he was awarded the and his pacifist outlook. Also he never acquired a Bristowe Medal for pathology. taste for fiction. After qualifying in medicine he obtained a re- He went to The Downs School at Colwall (1908- search studentship to work at the City Mental 11) and then to Leighton Park School at Reading Hospital in Cardiff. Here he was mainly occupied http://jmg.bmj.com/ (1912-16). After leaving school he served in the in studies on a patient with schizophrenia which Friends' Ambulance Train of the British Red Cross formed the basis of a thesis for the MD which he in France, and was demobilized after the end of the obtained in 1930. In 1931 he moved again, this War in 1918. time to the Royal Eastern Counties Institution at He went up to St John's College, Cambridge, in Colchester where he obtained the appointment of January 1919, where he first decided to read mathe- Research Medical Officer, a position sponsored by matics, but soon changed to the Moral Sciences the Pinsent-Darwin Trust and the Medical Re- Tripos. This was partly because he wanted to search Council in order to foster research into on September 24, 2021 by guest. Protected copyright. study mathematical logic under Bertrand Russell, mental defect. and partly because it offered the opportunity of The move to Colchester represented the starting studying psychology. However, it also involved point of his research career in human genetics and doing philosophy which he always claimed he could in mental retardation which he was to pursue for never understand. In Part II of the Tripos he the rest of his life. In 1939 he moved to Canada to specialized in logic and obtained a First. He was become Director of Psychiatric Research for On- awarded the Newcombe Prize and a Foundation tario. But he returned to England in 1945 when Scholarship at St John's. he was appointed to the Galton Professorship of After obtaining his BA in 1921 he spent a year Eugenics at University College London. In 1965 doing research in psychology with F. C. Bartlett and when he retired from the Galton Chair he became Director of the Kennedy-Galton Centre at Harper- We would like to acknowledge our gratitude to the bury Hospital near St Albans where he continued Royal Society for permission to print this article which to direct an active research programme till the end. appeared in Biographical Memoirs ofFellows of the Royal During the years after the war the subject of Society, 19, 521 (1973).-EDITOR human genetics underwent a period of the most 1 J Med Genet: first published as 10.1136/jmg.11.1.1 on 1 March 1974. Downloaded from 2 Harry Harris remarkable expansion and development, so that by patients was largely the product of legal and ad- the time of his death the subject was a very different ministrative decisions designed to achieve a con- one from that which he had taken up in 1931. He venient way of providing care within the existing remained throughout a leading figure in the field and framework of institutional and other arrangements. exerted a considerable influence on its development The state, at that time, of what might be regarded both by his own contributions and through his as educated lay opinion about the causes of mental students. In his 20 years at the Galton Laboratory defect is well illustrated by a story Penrose de- there was a constant stream of postdoctoral fellows lighted to tell about the official opening of a new particularly from the USA but also from other wing at the Colchester Institution. The patron of countries who came to work with him, and the the Institution was the King and it was hoped that a critical approach to human genetics which he member of the Royal Family could be induced to fostered consequently became widely disseminated. perform the opening cermony. The selected He received many honours and awards. These candidate after some negotiation was a Royal Duke, included Honorary DScs from McGill, Edinburgh, but it was stipulated by the civil servants who made and Newcastle and the Honorary MD from the arrangements that he was not to be allowed to Goteborg; the Weldon Medal for Biometrics from see any of the patients. The reason given for this the University of Oxford, 1950; the Albert Lasker precaution was that the Duchess was at that time Award, 1960; the International Award of the Joseph pregnant. In the end it all turned out well. The P. Kennedy Jr Foundation, 1964; the James Duke was greeted with enthusiasm by a guard of Calvert Spence Memorial Medal of the British honour who proudly stood to attention to salute him. Paediatric Society, 1964; and in 1965 at the 18th They were all patients who belonged to the hospital World Health Assembly in Geneva he received the troops of Boy Scouts and Girl Guides. With some first annual award of the Leon Bernstein Founda- difficulty it had been possible to persuade the tion for research in mental subnormality. He was authorities that any prenatal impressions of imbe- President of the Genetical Society of Great Britain cility from this source should they be vicariously 1955-58 and President of the Third International transmitted to the Duchess would be innocuous. Congress of Human Genetics in Chicago in 1966. Medical and scientific opinion was no doubt some- He was elected FRS in 1953, FRCP in 1962, and what in advance of this. But little systematic FRC Psych in 1971. scientific research into the medical and biological In 1928 he married Margaret, the daughter of problems posed by mental defect had in fact been John Beresford Leathes, FRS, Professor of Physio- carried out, principally because the subject seemed logy at the University of Sheffield. They had too far removed from the mainstream of medical http://jmg.bmj.com/ four children; Oliver (b. 1929), now Professor of science, or indeed from the mainstream of psy- Mathematics at the Open University; Roger (b. chiatry. Certainly there appeared to be few conven- 1931), now Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics, ventional career prospects in embarking on research Oxford, and also FRS; Jonathan (b. 1933) who is an in this field, but to Penrose the apparent disad- International Chess Master; and Shirley Victoria vantages and difficulties were probably among its (b. 1945), now a paediatrician. main attractions. He was never one to follow the herd. Furthermore, he seems to have perceived The Colchester Survey from the beginning that if the subject was on September 24, 2021 by guest. Protected copyright. The work that Penrose was appointed to carry approached quite objectively and without pre- out at the Royal Eastern Counties Institution under conceptions, and if a careful and systematic collec- the auspices of the Pinsent-Darwin Trust and the tion of facts about a large array of patients of all Medical Research Council was planned in 1930. grades and types and about their families could be The aim was to 'increase existing knowledge in the compiled, then there would be for the first time causation of mental deficiency', and it was decided a firm base on which a critical analysis of possible that the first thing that had to be done was to carry causal factors could be built. In particular he saw out a detailed study of a large series of mentally that if accurate numerical information about such defective patients of all grades and types from both things as parental age, birth order, stillbirths, and the clinical and the genetical points of view. Al- the incidence of particular abnormalities and dif- though by that time mental defect had come to be ferent grades of defect among the sibs and other recognized as a major social problem, there was relatives of the patients were collected, then these very little firm scientific knowledge about its nature could be susceptible to rigorous statistical analysis, or causation.