Sir Kenneth Lamont Stuart (died November 13, 2017 aged 97)
An announcement of the death of Sir Kenneth can be found in Barbados Today.
Kenneth Lamont Stuart was born in 1920 in Barbados in the West Indies and was educated at Harrison College, Barbados and McGill University, Montreal, where he studied classics and philosophy.
In 1943 he came to Queen’s and commenced his medical studies. In 1948, he gained the Coulter Scholarship in Clinical Medicine and Surgery and in the same year graduated with a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery and Bachelor of Obstetrics. The following year he gained a Diploma of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene from Liverpool University.
Back in Belfast he held resident appointments at the Royal Victoria Hospital and the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children for two years. In June 1951 he moved to University College London as Medical Registrar of the Professorial Unit of the Hospital for Tropical Diseases. During the same year he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Medicine by Queen’s.
In May 1952 he returned to the new University College Hospital of the West Indies in Jamaica, as its first senior registrar and later lecturer in medicine. He went on to become the first West Indian professor and dean of the faculty.
In a distinguished career Professor Sir Kenneth Stuart’s had spells as adviser to the Commonwealth Secretariat in London, was Professor and Head of Department of Medicine, University of the West Indies, a consultant in the University Hospital, Jamaica and a consultant advisor to the Wellcome Trust.
He was created Knight Bachelor in July 1977 and in 1986, received an Honorary DSc from Queen’s.
Patron of Doctors for Human Rights and a trustee of London Lighthouse, Sir Kenneth was the Gresham Professor of Physic between 1988 and 1992 at Gresham College in London. He served on many councils and boards in the United Kingdom and was a chairman of the Commonwealth Caribbean Health Research Council and a member of the academic board of St George’s University.
In a letter to The Independent in 1996, he called for a national council to respond to emerging medical-ethical issues, issues that could not be left entirely to doctor, scientists and lawyers.
One of the signatories to a letter supporting a holiday on Charles’ Darwin’s birthday published in The Times on February 12, 2003, he joined other eminent scientists and educators in July 2009 calling for vital changes to the proposed science curriculum for primary schools in England in a letter to the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families.
Sir Kenneth is survived by his wife Barbara and three children.
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