L. S. Penrose Papers

Arranged in three sections:
1. Personal and Family Papers
2. Work-Related Material
3. Correspondence

Lionel Sharples Penrose was born on 11 June 1898, second of four sons of James Doyle Penrose and Elizabeth Josephine, nee Peckover. His maternal grandfather was Alexander Peckover, later Baron Peckover and Lord Lieutenant of Cambridgeshire, and his younger brother was the artist Sir Roland Algernon Penrose. He also had an older brother, Alexander Peckover Doyle Penrose, and his youngest brother was Bernard Edmund Penrose.

L S Penrose was educated at the Downs School, Cornwall and Leighton Park School, Reading. Born into a Quaker family, from 1916 he served in the Friends' Ambulance Unit in France, a voluntary ambulance service founded in 1914 by members of the British Religious Society of Friends. After the war, Penrose went up to St John's College, Cambridge, where he gained a first in part II of the moral sciences tripos in 1921. He remained in Cambridge for a year's postgraduate research in psychology before spending two years studying psychiatry in Vienna. Deciding that a medical qualification would be advantageous to the progression of his research, he returned to England to carry out clinical work at St Thomas' Hospital, London, and qualified as MRCS LRCP in 1928. He received his MD in 1930 after undertaking a study in schizophrenia at the City Mental Hospital, Cardiff.

Penrose continued his study of mental illness at the Royal Eastern Counties Institution, Colchester. The resulting seven years of research was published in a Medical Research Council special report, known as the "Colchester Survey", and expanded into two books, Mental Defect (1933) and The Biology of Mental Defect (1949). During the Second World War, Penrose was director of psychiatric research in Ontario, Canada, and in 1945 he was appointed to the Galton Chair of Eugenics at UCL. He had the post renamed in 1963 as the Galton Chair of Human Genetics, and carried out his research on mental illness and genetic defect throughout his time at UCL. One of his particular interests was at the time known as "mongolism", but which he named "Down's anomaly" (later Down's syndrome). When Penrose retired from the Galton chair in 1965 he continued his research into genetic diseases at the Kennedy-Galton Centre, Harperbury Hospital

In addition to his research into Down's syndrome, Penrose was also an authority on finger, palm and sole prints as indicators of genetic disease and made significant contributions to the detection and treatment of phenylketonuria (PKU). He was awarded honorary degrees by McGill (1958), Edinburgh (1970), Newcastle (1968), and Göteborg (1966), the Weldon medal from Oxford (1950), the Albert Lasker award (1960), the international award of the Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation (1964), and the James Calvert Spence medal in paediatrics (1964). He was president of the Genetical Society of Great Britain (1955-8) and of the Third International Congress of Human Genetics in Chicago in 1966. He was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society in 1953, of the Royal College of Physicians of London in 1962, and of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 1971. (Source: DNB)

Penrose married Margaret Leathes in 1928 and they had four children: Oliver (b. 1929, Professor of Mathematics), Sir Roger (b. 1931, mathematical physicist), Jonathan (b. 1933, ten times British Chess Champion) and Shirley (b.1945, geneticist S V Hodgson). He had many interests outside his work life, particularly chess and puzzle-solving, both of which are well-represented in his archive.

L S Penrose died on the 12th May 1972.

University College London Records Office holds two files relating to Penrose:

Glasgow University Archive Services holds material relating to Penrose in its Guido Pontecorvo, James Harrison Renwick and Malcolm Andrew Ferguson-Smith collections.

In the Pontecorvo collection, related material can be found in the following series:

In the Renwick collection, related material can be found in the section "Research material" (UGC/155/3).

In the Ferguson-Smith collection related material can be found in the following series: "Correspondence 1959-61" (UGC/188/3/1); and "Correspondence 1961-1964" (UGC/188/3/2).

The Royal Institution of Great Britain holds correspondence between Penrose and William Bragg in the William Lawrence Bragg Papers (W.L. Bragg/93PQ/45-51) and (W.L. Bragg/35A/26-28).

The Royal Society holds Penrose's Certificate of Candidate for Election, 1953, (EC/1953/18), and a portrait photograph (IM/GA/AR/6934).

The Wellcome Library holds correspondence between Hans Gruneberg and L S Penrose, 1951-1972 and further correspondence with Hans Gruneberg and Margaret Penrose after her husband's death, 1972-1973 (PP/GRU/64/1); also correspondence between F H C Crick and Penrose, 1968 (PP/CRI/D/1/1/16).