Sydney Selwyn

The winner of the 2021 Sydney Selwyn Lecture was Dr Lotte Elton. With Dr Deniz Kaya & Dr Andrew Nanapragasam - both Highly Commended

He was an active member of many prestigious research and educationally based clubs and organisations, for example being President of the Osler Club of London and President of the Harveian Society of London (1991–92).

He was honorary archivist of the Royal College of Pathology of which he was also a Fellow (FRCPath), President of the Faculty of History and Philosophy of Medicine and Pharmacy president of the Medical Sciences Historical Society and a Liveryman of the Society of Apothecaries Worshipful where he was also Director of the DHMSA (the Diploma of the History of Medicine at the Society of Apothecaries), an important and popular course and diploma, to which some students even flew in from across Europe (and one from Canada) each week to attend! He led this course to new heights of popularity over the seventeen years of his tenure, until ill health forced his retirement in 1990.

The Florence Nightingale £10 banknote was first issued in February 1975 and proved extremely popular (leading for a while to the £10 note being nicknamed "a Flo" by some, as in "excuse me – have you got change for a Flo"). It was not withdrawn until May 1994.

He worked with the BBC on a number of projects which included, for example, "Horizon" documentaries and "Microbes and Men" (1974).

During the 1970s and 1980s he played a significant role as a pioneer in the field of bone marrow transplantation. In particular he was closely involved with the treatment of two ground-breaking cases; those of Simon Bostic and Anthony Nolan. Anthony Nolan's mother went on to found the charitable Anthony Nolan Trust.

He appeared a number of times as "a medical expert" on television. For example, in the 1970s he was interviewed by Frank Bough on the BBC's then popular "Nationwide" programme shown on prime family-time TV. Selwyn introduced himself on the programme as a microbiologist and bacteriologist with an interest in dermatological matters such as the flora and fauna of our skin. He went on to explain that through his researches he had come to realise most of us were using far too many chemical-based cosmetics and, as a result, disrupting the ecology of our skin. This resulted, he said, in building-up a dependence on more of these otherwise unnecessary cosmetics. He suggested that clean water and small amounts of simple soap were ample and that most of the available cosmetics and personal hygiene products being advertised were not just unnecessary but also potentially harmful especially through habitual over use.

He enjoyed a private family party in his honour for his 62nd birthday and was as full of enthusiasm and humour as ever (though of course had some difficulty in expressing it). He died peacefully at home later the following day.

He worked briefly (from 1959–1960) as a house physician in Edinburgh City Hospital before becoming a lecturer in bacteriology at University of Edinburgh Medical School (1961–1966). In 1967 he became one of the youngest-ever visiting professors for the World Health Organization (WHO) at Baroda University in India, as well as a WHO SE Asia medical consultant. He toured India extensively, visiting not only towns and cities but also many remote rural areas as part of his WHO project to greatly improve the standards of health and hygiene at various hospitals. He returned from India to become first Reader, then Consultant and finally Professor of Medical Microbiology at Westminster Medical School, University of London.

Sydney Selwyn (7 November 1934 – 8 November 1996) was a British physician, medical scientist, and professor. He was a medical microbiologist with an interest in bacteriology, authority on the history of medicine, avid collector, writer, lecturer, world traveller, and occasional radio and TV broadcaster.

Sydney Selwyn was born in Leeds, 7 November 1934 and died in London, 8 November 1996.

Selwyn's parents owned and ran a butcher shop in Leeds and originally expected him to follow them in their trade or at least something similar. He chose instead to devote his life to science and academia. As a working-class boy growing up in England in the 1930s, and during World War II, it was a great achievement for him to win a scholarship to be educated at the prestigious and ancient Leeds Grammar School. He then went on to study at the University of Edinburgh from which he graduated with a BSc, MB ChB, and gained an MD in hospital infection.