Professor Roy Porter

(1946-2002)
The Porter legacy by David Pearson, Librarian in the Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine.

People throughout the Wellcome Trust, like people around the world, were shocked and saddened by the sudden death of Roy Porter on 3 March 2002. Out near his allotment in Hastings, he suffered a massive heart attack which gave him no second chance; he had only recently retired from the Trust, after 22 years in its employment, and the allotment, like acting and learning to play the saxophone, was one of his newly declared aims in a retirement cut cruelly short. He was only 55.

Roy was a legendary figure whose achievements and charisma amply justified the legend. His life has been summarised in the numerous obituaries which have appeared. They have referred to his early Cambridge career, first as a brilliant undergraduate, then as a history don at Churchill College; to his move to the Academic Unit of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine here at the Trust in 1979, where he became Professor of the Social History of Medicine in 1993; to his election as a Fellow of the British Academy in 1994; and to his prodigious written output. A search of the Wellcome Library catalogue, on Roy Porter, retrieves 260 items, a simply amazing outpouring of books, journal articles and reviews. His best-known books took an all-embracing view of madness, quacks, gout, London, the Enlightenment, and much more; his Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A medical history of humanity (1997) achieved a synthesis of medical history of all periods. Besides the books and articles, there were countless appearances on television and radio, and in the newspapers, bringing a humane and social perspective on history and medicine to wide audiences.

He was greatly in demand as a lecturer and as a teacher, and everyone who heard him in action will remember the earnest but infectious enthusiasm with which he captured his audiences. He is also remembered as a very generous spirit, readily willing to help the many students and scholars who beat a path to his door. He always came across as someone who managed to keep a distance from the administration and politics that clutter so many lives, but in the year that he acted as Director of the Academic Unit, shortly before he retired, he rose to it with a seriousness and diligence that took many by surprise.

His obituarists all refer to the Porter hallmarks that marked him out as a distinctive character, as well as a distinguished academic: the rings and gold chains, the jeans and leather jackets, the succession of wives. They also hint at a more private and mysterious Roy, harder to penetrate behind a self-effacing exterior that was never still. But whatever the inner drivers, the output was remarkable. Roy Porter did great things for the history of medicine, and he was a wonderful ambassador for the Wellcome name. He approached medical history very much within its social context, and was concerned to help us understand what medicine is, beyond the pills and the scalpels, and how it affected people's lives. "Medicine has played a major and growing role in human societies and for that reason its history needs to be explored so that its place and powers can be understood," as he wrote in the introduction to The Greatest Benefit. As a walking embodiment of some of the key things the Trust seeks to achieve through its History of Medicine Programme - serious exploration of the subject, while also bringing it to wider audiences - he was extremely effective.

He had many plans for the future, and was sought after as much as ever on the lecture circuit and in the media. He teased us, in the year leading up to retirement, that he would write no more books but we knew that was untrue, and that good things remained in store. His death was a shock and a loss to us all; he will be remembered with the respect due to a great scholar, but also with the deep affection due to a much-loved colleague.

The Porter legacy

Academic history
1946 Roy Sydney Porter born in south London on New Year's Eve
1968 Graduates with double first in history from University of Cambridge
1970 Takes up a research fellowship at Christ's College
1972 Moves to Churchill College, Cambridge, as Director of Studies in History
1977 Appointed Dean of Churchill College
1979 Joins Academic Unit of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London, as Senior Lecturer
1991 Appointed Reader at the Wellcome Institute
1993 Appointed Professor of Social History of Medicine at the Wellcome Institute
1994 Elected Fellow of the British Academy
2001 Retires to St Leonard's on Sea

Selected works
1977 His PhD thesis, The Making of Geology, is published - the first of more than 100 books
1982 Publication of English Society in the Eighteenth Century (2nd edn 1990)
1987 A Social History of Madness and Disease, Medicine and Society in England 1550-1860
1994 London: A social history
1995 The Facts of Life (with Lesley Hall)
1996 A Social History of Madness
1997 Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A medical history of humanity
2000 Enlightenment: Britain and the creation of the modern world (Wolfson Prize for History 2001)
2001 Bodies Politic: Disease, death and doctors in Britain 1650-1900
2002 Madness: A brief history published in February

External links

Roy Porter obituary (The Guardian: 5 March 2002)