Robert James Valentine Pulvertaft

Robert James Valentine Pulvertaft, OBE (14 February 1897 – 30 March 1990) was an Anglo-Irish pathologist. Born in Cork, Ireland, Pulvertaft served in the First World War before undertaking a medical education at Trinity College, Cambridge, and St. Thomas's Hospital, London. He became the laboratory director at Westminster Hospital in 1931 and earned a medical degree from Cambridge in 1933. He served in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the Second World War, reaching the rank of lieutenant colonel and serving as a pathologist in hospitals in Egypt. During his time abroad, he developed methods for local production of penicillin and treated Winston Churchill during his illness in Tunisia. Pulvertaft was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1944. After his return to England, he became professor of clinical pathology at Westminster Hospital in 1946, serving in this role until his retirement in 1962. The same year, he was made an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine. After his retirement from Westminster, he travelled to Africa, where he conducted research on lymphoma. Pulvertaft returned to England at the age of 70 and died in Macclesfield in 1990.