Item TH/PP/5 - Draft article by surgeon Norman Rupert Barrett on Australian contributions to medical knowledge, [1967]

Norman Rupert Barrett was born in Adelaide, Australia, on 16 May 1903, the son of Alfred Barrett, Sussex. Returning to Britain for his education, he attended Eton College, Trinity College, Cambridge (1st class Hons Natural Science Tripos, 1925, MA 1930); and St Thomas' Hospital, University of London (MB 1928, MChir 1931), becoming a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1930. He also held a Rockefeller Travelling Fellowship, 1935. He held positions as Lecturer in Surgery, University of London, 1935-1970; Surgeon to King Edward VII Sanatorium, Midhurst, Sussex, 1938-1970; Consulting Thoracic Surgeon to the Royal Navy and to the Ministry of Social Security, 1944-1970. He was appointed Visiting Professor of Surgery at the Royal North Shore Hospital, Sydney, 1963, and the Cleveland Metropolitan General. Hospital, USA. He was also Examiner in Surgery at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Birmingham, London, and Khartoum. Barrett was also President of the Thoracic Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland, 1962; The Thoracic Society, 1963, a Fellow, Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland. He was a member of the Council of the Royal College of Surgeons, 1962-1974, and its Vice-President in 1972, as well as being a member of the Tuberculosis Assoc of America and the Association for Thoracic Surgery. He edited Thorax, 1946-1971. In 1931 he married Elizabeth Warington Smyth. In 1969 he was awarded CBE. He retired in 1970, and died 8 January 1979. Publications: Many papers on surgical and historical subjects; contributions to many textbooks of surgery.