Administrative / Biographical History

MB ChB Manch 1931, MD 1938; FRCP 1946.

Smyth was born in Lancashire on 27 February 1907 and was educated at Blackburn Grammar School and the University of Manchester, where he won a number of academic distinctions, including the Turner Medical Prize. He held resident appointments at MRI and Crumpsall Hospital then went to the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases in London in 1936. Smyth began to develop his expertise in neurology, and was supported by a Dickinson Research Scholarship and a Rockefeller Travelling Fellowship. Smyth did research work in Paris before returning to England at the outbreak of war. Smyth was invited by Professor Hugh Cairns to join in the formation of the neurosurgical unit in the RAMC, and was commissioned as major in 1940. Two weeks after mobilisation, his Unit was captured, and Smyth spent the next four years working in a prisoner of war hospital in Germany as a neurological specialist. Smyth returned to England in 1944 and became specialist in neurology at the Military Hospital for Head Injuries at Oxford. Leaving the Army in 1945, Smyth returned to Manchester as lecturer in neurology at the University. He was later consultant physician at MRI, Crumpsall Hospital, Manchester Victoria Jewish Hospital, and visiting neurologist to the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Hospital, Oswestry. After retirement, was made honorary consultant at MRI. Smyth was a life member of Manchester Medical Society and the Association of British Neurologists. Smyth died on 14 December 1989.

Related Material

See also MMC/1/SmythG.