Professor Alan Glynn Interview

Alan Glynn studied medicine in the 1940s and qualified MD in 1960 (London). Early in his career he was a Medical Registrar at the Rheumatism Unit, Canada Red Cross Memorial Hospital in Taplow and House Physician at University College Hospital, London. The major part of his career was at St Mary's Hospital, London, where he served as Senior Registrar at the Hospital and Wright-Fleming Institute, Professor in Bacteriology in the Medical School and later Honorary Consultant in Bacteriology.

Glynn is the author of several papers on immunlogy, bacteriology and virulence, including the genetics of resistance to bacterial infection and immune responses to gonococcal and staphylococcal infection.

In the 1980s he was visiting professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He was most recently Director of the Central Public Health Laboratory in Colindale (part of the Public Health Laboratory Service).

Glynn became a member of the Royal College of Physicians in 1954 and a Fellow in 1974. He was a Member of the Royal College of Pathology from 1964 and made a Fellow in 1972.

Elsbeth Heaman is Assistant Professor, Canada Research Chair in Early Canada, Department of History, McGill University, Toronto, Canada. The Glynn interview was undertaken as research for her recently published monograph 'St Mary's: The History of a London Teaching Hospital' (McGill-Queens, 2003), which details the development of medical research and medical politics at St Mary's Medical School.