Sir Gordon Ethelbert Ward Wolstenholme

Short abstract

Director of the Ciba Foundation and a “medical ambassador” to the international scientific community

During the second world war Gordon was in charge of distributing blood for transfusions throughout the central Mediterranean and Middle East with the Royal Army Medical Corps, finishing in 1947 as a lieutenant colonel and receiving the military OBE.

Figure 1.

In 1947 he became the first director of scientific and educational charity the Ciba Foundation (now Novartis), committed to the promotion of international co-operation in chemical and medical research. Scientific conferences were held which Gordon likened to “scientific house parties,” bringing together a forum of clinicians, scientists, heads of state, and Nobel prize winners from all over the world. As director Gordon and his wife, Dr Dushanka Messinger, a Yugoslav whom he met in Italy during the war, travelled together to many countries, which placed him at the heart of the international scientific community as a “medical ambassador.” In his 30 years at the Ciba Foundation Gordon was involved in topics such as transplantation, genetics, embryogenesis, carcinogenesis, and immunology.

He restructured the medical care in Ethiopia and Venezuela, receiving the Star of Ethiopia in 1966. When he retired from the Ciba Foundation in 1978 he set up Action in International Medicine (AIM), which he chaired until 1995.

He leaves his second wife, Dushanka, and children from both marriages.

Gordon Ethelbert Ward Wolstenholme, director of the Ciba Foundation (Novartis) (b Sheffield 1913; q Middlesex Hospital Medical School, London, 1939; OBE, FRCP, FRSA, FACP), died from carcinomatosis and atrial fibrillation cardiomyopathy on 29 May 2004.