Michael Woodruff

Early career Soon after his marriage, Woodruff travelled to England to take the second half of the FRCS Exam. Woodruff took his new wife over with no guarantee of employment, and declined a two-year travelling fellowship to Oxford University offered by the Australian Red Cross because it required him to return home and work. Before departing, he applied for a position as a Tutor of Surgery at the University of Sheffield, and learned en route that they had accepted his application. He took the FRCS exam in 1947 and passed—a result that, in Woodruff's view, was not hindered by the fact that one of his examiners, Colonel Julian Taylor, had been with him at Changi. He took advantage of this access and his wife's skills as a lab assistant to investigate in utero grafts (tissue grafts performed while the recipient was still in the womb). At the time, the surgical community hypothesized that if a recipient were given in utero grafts, he would be able to receive tissue from the donor later in life without risk of rejection. Woodruff's experiments with rats produced negative results.

While in Aberdeen, Woodruff also visited the United States on a World Health Organization (WHO) Travelling Fellowship. During the visit, he met many of the leading American surgeons, an experience that increased his own desire to continue his work and research. After returning from the US, Woodruff experimented with the effects of cortisone and the impact of blood antigen on rejection. As part of his blood antigen studies, Woodruff found two volunteers with identical blood antigens and arranged for them to exchange skin grafts. When the grafts were rejected, Woodruff determined that rejection must be controlled by additional factors.

Edinburgh

In 1957, Woodruff was appointed to the Chair of Surgical Science at the University of Edinburgh without requiring an interview. Woodruff thought that he had to be vigilant with his first kidney transplant, as he regarded the British medical community's attitude to be conservative towards transplantation. The corresponding Lister Oration, given at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, was delivered on 8 April 1970, and was titled 'Biological aspects of individuality'.

The success of Woodruff's clinical transplant program was recognised and enhanced by funding from the Nuffield Foundation to construct and open the Nuffield Transplant Surgery Unit at the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh. In 1970 an outbreak of hepatitis B struck the transplant unit, resulting in the death of several patients and four of Woodruff's employees due to fulminant hepatic failure. Woodruff was deeply shaken by the loss and the unit was closed for a period while an investigation was carried out to develop a contingency plan to avoid such a disaster in future. The unit then resumed operations. and joined the MRC Clinical and Population Cytogenetics Unit. He spent the next ten years there, engaged in cancer research with an emphasis on tumour immunology using Corynebacterium parvum. During that time, Woodruff also published twenty-five papers and two books. Woodruff also held office in several scientific organisations, serving as Vice-President of the Royal Society and President of The Transplantation Society. Finally, Woodruff served for many years as a WHO advisor and as a visiting professor at a number of universities.

Despite his profound influence on transplantation and what Peter Morris called "a commanding presence in any gathering", Woodruff wrote eight books during his career, covering numerous aspects of medicine and surgery. Deficiency Diseases in Japanese Prison Camps. M.R.C Special Report No. 274. H.M. Stationery Office, London 1951. Surgery for Dental Students. Blackwell, Oxford. (Fourth Ed., 1984 with H.E. Berry) 1954. The Transplantation of Tissues and Organs. Charles C. Thomas. Springfield, Illinois 1960. The One and the Many: Edwin Stevens Lectures for the Laity. Royal Society of Medicine, London 1970. On Science and Surgery. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 1976. The Interaction of Cancer and Host: Its Therapeutic Significance. Grune Stratton, New York 1980. Cellular Variation and Adaptation in Cancer: Biological Basis and Therapeutic Consequences. Oxford University Press 1990. Nothing Venture Nothing Win. Scottish Academic Press 1996. (autobiography)

Personal life In 1946 Woodruff married Hazel Gwenyth Ashby.

The Woodruffs had two sons, followed by a daughter. Their first son completed a civil engineering degree at Sheffield University, where the daughter also attended, completing a science degree in botany. The second son did a medical degree at University College London and became an ophthalmologist. Woodruff and his wife were avid tennis players and had a court in their home in Edinburgh. After moving to Edinburgh, Woodruff took up sailing with the Royal Forth Yacht Club, and went on to compete in some races. He owned a boat and was known to go sailing on it in the Mediterranean each summer with his wife. During his student years, Woodruff was a keen rower and field hockey player.