William Ewart Gye

William Ewart Gye FRS (born William Ewart Bullock, 11 August 1889, Breaston – 14 October 1952) was a British pathologist and cancer researcher.[1][2][3]

Career

After a difficult financial struggle, Bullock matriculated at University College, Nottingham and, after studying chemistry under Kipping, graduated there with a BSc in 1906. In 1911 Bullock married his first wife, Elsa Gye, who was a dedicated suffragette.[4] Bullock studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and in 1912 graduated there MBChB. In 1913 he received his Doctor of Medicine qualification from the University, and won a gold medal for his medical thesis.[5] He also won the Ellis Prize in Physiology for his essay, “The chemistry of nerve degeneration.”[6] Still in 1913 he joined the staff of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund,[2] which at that time was under the direction of Ernest Francis Bashford.[7] When World War I started, Bullock joined the Royal Army Medical Corps and served in France and then Italy in charge of a field ambulance unit.[8] He was reassigned to London as a hospital pathologistl and worked with William Cramer on gas gangrene.[9] After demobilization with the rank of captain, he joined the National Institute for Medical Research at Hampstead, where he worked with Edgar Hartley Kettle on silicosis.[10] In June 1919,[11] William Bullock's wife retook her maiden name, and William Ewart Bullock changed his surname to "Gye",[4] perhaps because he wanted to please his wife[4] and perhaps because he was irritated by having to often explain that he was not the bacteriologist William Bulloch — there is a theory that the name change was in gratitude to a benefactor (not Bullock's wife or father-in-law).[12]

With W. J. Purdy, Gye conducted experiments confirming Peyton Rous's claims concerning the Rous sarcoma virus.[13] Gye was the director of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund’s laboratories at Mill Hill from 1934 to 1949, when he resigned due to ill health. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1938 and a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1940.

Gye's and his first wife Elsa had three sons together. She died of cancer in 1943. On 30 December 1944[14] Gye married the ophthalmologist Ida Mann and in 1949 they moved to Perth, Western Australia.[8]

References
  1. William Ewart Gye, Munks Roll Details, Lives of the fellows, Royal College of Physicians
  2. Andrewes CH (1953). "William Ewart Gye. 1884-1952". Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society. 8 (22): 418–430. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1953.0008.
  3. Craigie, J. "Dr. W. E. Gye". Nature. 170 (4333): 825. doi:10.1038/170825a0. PMID 13013220.
  4. Crawford, Elizabeth (2003). "Gye, Elsa (1881–1943)". The Womens's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 1866–1928. Routledge. p. 254.
  5. Bullock, W. E. (1913). "A contribution to the chemical pathology of the lipoids". Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  6. Bullock, W. E. (1913). "The chemistry of nerve degeneration". Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  7. "Obituary. Ernest Francis Bashford, O.B.E., M.D." British Medical Journal. 2 (3271): 440–441. 8 September 1923. doi:10.1136/bmj.2.3271.440-a. PMC 2316986.
  8. "W. E. Gye. M.D., F.R.C.P., F.R.S,". British Medical Journal. 2 (4790): 945–946. 25 October 1952. PMC 2021835. PMID 12978397.
  9. Bullock WE; Cramer W (1919). "On a new factor in the mechanism of bacterial infection". Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Containing Papers of a Biological Character. 90 (633): 513–529. doi:10.1098/rspb.1919.0009. JSTOR 80697.
  10. Gye WE; Kettle EH (1922). "Silicosis and miners' phthisis". British Journal of Experimental Pathology. 3 (5): 241–251. PMC 2047740.
  11. "William Ewart Gye" (PDF). The London Gazette. 15 July 1919. p. 9054.
  12. Vischer, Peter (October 1925). "A Romance of the Microscope". Popular Science: 13–14. This story by Peter Vischer alleges that Bullock changed his surname to "Gye" before 1919, but this allegation is false.
  13. Gye WE.; Purdy WJ (1930). "Rous Sarcoma No. 1: Influence of Mode of Extraction on the Potency of Filtrates". British Journal of Experimental Pathology. 11 (3): 211–216. PMC 2048160.
  14. Biography – Dame Ida Caroline Mann – Australian Dictionary of Biography, brief bio by Geraldine Byrne
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