Wilkinson, Professor Andrew

The following is an interim description which may change when detailed cataloguing takes place in future:

Correspondence, reports, notes, reprints, case material and photographs covering his career in paediatric surgery, and other health care issues such as burns and accidents.

Andrew Wood Wilkinson was born in Exeter in April 1914, and educated at Weymouth college, Dorset, and the University of Edinburgh. He graduated MB ChB in 1937, winning the Pattison prize in clinical surgery. He went on to become house surgeon at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Edinburgh, and then clinical tutor and private assistant to Sir James Fraser at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. He also served on a Department of Health committee looking at the treatment of burns, during this period. In 1940 he was made a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.

The course of Wilkinson's medical career was altered by the Second World War. In 1942 he joined the RAMC as a surgical specialist. He was put in charge of an advanced casualty clearing station on D-Day, treating the wounded all the way to the Rhine. He was then posted to India, Malaya and Singapore. By the end of the war he had risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel.

after the war ended Wilkinson returned to study in Edinburgh, earning a gold medal for his ChM thesis in 1949. he then worked as a lecturer in Edinburgh and at Aberdeen University. He was an active member of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, serving as a member of Council 1964-1973, vice-president 1973-1976, and president 1976-1979. He was also president of the British Association of Paediatric Surgeons from 1970 t0 1972, and was awarded its highest honour, the Denis Browne Gold Medal, for outstanding contribution to paediatric surgery in 1981. In addition, he was appointed CBE in 1979.

In 1958, Wilkinson left Scotland to become the first Nuffield Professor in Paediatric Surgery at the Institute of Child Health in London, the first chair of paediatric surgery in Britian. He also worked as honourary consultant surgeon to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children whilst in London. He retired to Rockcliffe, on the north shore of the Solway Firth, in 1979.