Euphan Maxwell

Euphan Maxwell (1887–1964) was an Irish ophthalmologist and the first woman ophthalmic surgeon in Ireland at the Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital, Dublin.

Life and education Euphan Montgomerie Maxwell was born in 1887, the daughter of Dr Patrick William Maxwell and Elizabeth Maxwell née Suckling. Her sister was the historian Constantia Maxwell, whom she lived with throughout her life at the family home at 19 Lower Baggot Street. Maxwell studied medicine and surgery at Trinity College Dublin, going on to be appointed a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI). Both sisters were among the first women to attend the college as students. Maxwell was one of the founding members of the Elizabethan Society in 1904, a society for the female students of the college.

During World War I, Maxwell became one of the first seven women to serve in the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1916. She went on to be deployed to Malta to the Ophthalmic Department St George's Hospital in August 1916. She resigned and left in 1917 to return to Dublin due to her father falling ill. She delivered the inaugural lecture established in his memory, the Montgomery Lectureship in Ophthalmology. Maxwell was one of the founding members of the Irish Ophthalmologic Society, elected the society's president from 1939 to 1941. She served as an examiner in Ophthalmology at the RCSI.

Maxwell was a member of the short-lived Irish Centre Party, sitting on its Provisional General Committee.