Trustees & Founder
Chair - Professor Peter Dawson *
Elizabeth Beckman
Professor Wladyslaw Gedroyc *
Dr Paul Humphries *
Dr Shonit Punwani *
Nicolae Ratiu
Gerald Rosen
Jonathan Ticehurst
* denotes those Trustees which sit on the Expert Review Panel for grant funding applications
If you would like to contact a Trustee please email chair@radiologicalresearchtrust.org
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The Radiological Research Trust Founder
Professor George du Boulay
Professor Edward Philip George Houssemayne du Boulay was one of Britain’s leading neuroradiologists, and a world famous veterinary radiologist. He retired as Director of the Lysholm Radiological Department at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Queen Square, London in 1985 and died on 25 March 2009.
He was born on 28 January 1922 in the Swiss Hospital, Alexandria, Egypt, and having won a scholarship at the age of eleven he became a pupil at Christ’s Hospital, Horsham. During World War II he was a medical student, first at King’s College and subsequently at Charing Cross Hospital Medical School, London, qualifying in 1945, with house appointments at Charing Cross and at Derby City Hospital. At the age of 25 he became a registrar in radiology, firstly at the Middlesex Hospital, then at St Bartholomew’s. While training, he published his first research papers, including one on topical application of penicillin ointment, which he conveniently forgot when drawing up a CV in later years. He soon felt the attraction of the neurosciences, and obtained a position at Atkinson Morley’s Hospital, Wimbledon, a neurosurgical centre presided over by Wylie McKissock, becoming a Fellow of the Faculty (now the Royal College) of Radiologists along the way.
In 1954 George du Boulay was appointed consultant radiologist at the Maida Vale site of the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases and at St Bartholomew’s Hospital. His zoological interest led to his becoming Radiological Advisor to the Nuffield Institute of Comparative Medicine, effectively head of the Radiology Department at London Zoo, where he worked as consultant radiologist; this post also gave him access to primates for important research work. In 1968 he moved from Maida Vale to the National Hospital, Queen Square and, finding that there was no office for him, found a substantial shed in a garden catalogue, had it erected on the roof of the Lysholm Radiological Department and made cupboards and bookcases for it himself. When James Bull retired in 1975 he became Director of the department and in 1976 was awarded a personal Chair in Neuroradiology (the first in Britain) in the Institute of Neurology, University of London. Like James Bull, he was an enthusiastic and generous teacher.
The British Institute of Radiology awarded him its Barclay Medal, for contributing materially to the science and practice of radiology, in 1968 and in 1976 he became President of the Institute. At the BIR, he was instrumental in setting up the Radiological Research Trust, of which he became the first Director in 1985, the year in which he was made a Companion of the Order of the British Empire. He was a born fundraiser, working as Appeal Coordinator at the BIR from 1976 to 1984, and later being an extremely active Trustee of the National Hospital Development Foundation, for which he raised tens of millions of pounds. In October 1999 he was elected a Foundation Fellow of University College London Hospitals, of which the National Hospital had become a part.
George du Boulay was a founder member of both the British Society of Neuroradiologists and the European Society of Neuroradiology; he was President of the former from 1982 to 1984 and of the latter from 1986 to 1988. From 1974 he was Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Neuroradiology, which became the European Society’s official organ. In 1986 he was invited to be President of the XIV Symposium Neuroradiologicum, held in London in 1990; his financial organisation of the meeting was so successful that he was able to establish a charity, Neuroradiological Symposia, which has continued to support subsequent symposia.
George’s very wide research interests were focussed around diseases of the blood vessels supplying the brain, and particularly on spasm in the cerebral arteries secondary to subarachnoid haemorrhage. His first research paper on this subject appeared in 1965, and related papers more than 20 years later. He was particularly interested in metabolic effects on the cerebral vessels and, in the era when most cerebral angiography was carried out under general anaesthesia, showed that hyperventilation could make a major contribution to image quality, enabling him and his colleagues to make a careful study of all phases – arterial, capillary and venous – of the study. Research into the craniocerebral circulation of mammals was invaluable for evaluation of the true nature of the extracranial vessels when these became of interest to neuroradiologists.
He worked with colleagues from many countries (before membership of the European Union imposed significant restrictions on such collaborations for those who take them seriously) and many different disciplines – radiographers, surgeons, neurologists, physiologists, physicists, computer experts – but was always a prime mover in any research project. Like James Bull, he actively encouraged hisjuniors to engage in long-term, worthwhile research, and was a pioneer in the application of any new technique, such as computed tomography, radionuclide and sonographic investigations, and latterly magnetic resonance imaging, to both clinical neuroradiology and research. In his retirement he continued physiological experiments in the Institute of Neurology and worked on using computers to interpret radiological images, often in collaboration with his son Professor Benedict du Boulay. He was an Honorary Research Fellow of the Zoological Society of London until 2003, when he was 81 years old.
His first major book Principles of X-ray diagnosis of the skull appeared in 1965, rapidly becoming the standard English-language text.
Typically, it was based on his own detailed, careful observations, rather than received opinion. His work at the Zoo resulted in The cranial arteries of mammals (1973), written in collaboration with Pamela Verity, his second wife, while An atlas of normal vertebral angiograms (1976) was produced with Paul Ross, an American co-worker. He was the editor of A textbook of radiological diagnosis, Volume I: the central nervous system (1984) (the erstwhile “British Authors”) and in 1989 co-author of Magnetic resonance in multiple sclerosis, one of the first books on this burgeoning topic. Other books he wrote or contributed to concerned migraine and applications of computers in medicine.
For the last forty years of his life his home was in the hamlet of Brington, whence, until some years after official retirement, he commuted the 120 kilometres to London, where he often worked in two or three different centres each day. He was as intensely involved in personal village life and local issues as in radiology, and not long before his death wrote a verse play which was performed in the local church. That building was filled to overflowing by family, colleagues and friends at his funeral on 2 April 2009. He is survived by his wife Pam, by sons Ben, Giles, David and Andrew, and by daughters Mary Jane and Kathryn