Herbert Dudley Purves

Herbert Dudley Purves (25 September 1908 – 15 April 1993) was a New Zealand academic, medical researcher and scientist.

Biography He was educated at Hastings West Primary School and Napier Boys' High School. Purves' academic strengths showed early as he received prizes for science in the third form, for mathematics in the fourth form, and for Latin, mathematics and science in the lower 6th. He won the Isabella Siteman scholarship, which was awarded to the highest-ranking Hawkes Bay student who did not make the scholarship list. The scholarship required Purves to study science or medicine at the University of Otago. In 1926, he travelled to Dunedin to study physics, chemistry and mathematics. He majored in chemistry, earning a BSc in 1928 and an MSc with first-class honours in chemistry in 1931.

Purves' working life was spent in full-time medical research at the University of Otago Medical School in Dunedin. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in 1970, and in 1972 he was conferred with an honorary DSc by the University of Otago.

In the 1974 Queen's Birthday Honours, Purves was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George, for services to medicine. In 1987, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary celebration of the Medical Research Council the governor-general, Sir Paul Reeves, presented Purves with a special silver medal in recognition of his outstanding contribution to medical research.

Death He died on 15 April 1993, aged 84, after a long illness.

Family Purves married Daphne Helen Cowie in 1939. She survived him as did their two daughters and one son.