Professor David M. Greenfield (St Mary’s Hospital Medical School 1940)

Provided by Peter Fentem

David Greenfield, who died on 17 November 2005 was a distinguished alumnus of St Mary's Hospital Medical School. He was an eminent physiologist and the Foundation Dean of the Faculty of Medicine in the University of Nottingham for 15 years from 1966-1981. Nottingham was the first of the new medical schools.

He is believed to be the first student at St Mary's to take an intercalated BSc Honours degree. He qualified in medicine there in 1940. After resident appointments, including that of House Physician to Professor George Pickering, he joined the department of Physiology at St Mary's as a Junior Lecturer. There he studied the circulation in human limbs, and collaborated in work on the haemodynamics of the foetal circulation. His research on the effects of acceleration and enhanced gravity on the circulation, performed in the laboratory on the top floor of the Medical School led to an association with the Institute of Aviation Medicine at Farnborough.

At the age of 31, Greenfield became the Dunville Professor of Physiology in the Queen's University of Belfast and continued pioneering research into the human peripheral circulation. His department attracted many brilliant young medical scientists. Greenfield was always able to get the best out of staff and to inspire great loyalty.

During 1963-64 he worked in the San Francisco Medical Centre, University of California. He invented and developed a technique for testing cardiovascular reflex function (lower body negative pressure) which became used extensively by NASA. He contributed to our understanding of how the human circulation can withstand, first the acceleration and then the weightlessness of space travel. Greenfield has never received the credit for this that he deserved.

In 1964 Greenfield returned to St Mary's as professor, but plans were developing to start a new medical school in Nottingham. Sir George Pickering, representing another link to St Mary's, became the chairman of the University's Medical School Advisory Committee. In 1966 David was appointed to be Dean of the new school. It was a unique opportunity. It was the first new medical school of the twentieth century in the UK.