Geoffrey S. Dawes

Biography Dawes was born on 21 January 1918, in Mackworth, Derbyshire, and was brought up in Elvaston, where his father was the vicar of Elvaston and Thulston. He had four siblings who were all older than he was. Dawes lived at Thurleston Hall, the vicarage for Elvaston. The hall had previously been the home of William Darwin Fox. His prep school was in the next village of Shardlow, where he studied until he started at Repton School which was still within south Derbyshire. This association with Repton continued as later he would become both a member and later chair of their governors. and where he worked for the next 37 years,

His initial research was conducted into the distribution and control of fetal circulation, mostly in unborn lamb fetus. He studied chemoreceptors, the biological mechanism that start the changes in birth. In particular he studied the onset of breathing, for the implications for human physiology, and changes in the pulmonary and systemic circulations. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in March 1971.

Dawes was an editor of the British Journal of Pharmacology for many years. He won the James Spence Medal in 1969, that is awarded by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health for outstanding contributions to the advancement or clarification of paediatric knowledge, the Virginia Apgar award of the American Academy of Paediatrics, the Osler Memorial Medal of Oxford University and many more.

Upon retirement, and still fully fit with an acute mind, he was recruited as first director of the Sunley Research Centre at Charing Cross Hospital.