Michael Woodruff

English surgeon and biologist; transplantation and cancer researcher (1911–2001)

The remainder of the Woodruffs returned to London, and the two boys lived with their mother and paternal grandmother in the latter's residence in Finchley. Michael and his brother went back to Australia in 1917 after their mother, Margaret, died of a staphylococcal septicaemia. The two then spent a short time under the care of an aunt before being rejoined by their father in 1917. In 1919, Harold remarried and his new wife raised the children from his first marriage. The two boys did their early schooling at Trinity Grammar School in Melbourne. From then on he spent all of his youth in Australia except for a year in Europe in 1924 when his father went on sabbatical leave at Paris's Pasteur Institute. During this time, Woodruff and his brother boarded at Queen's College in Taunton, Somerset on the south coast of England. The headmaster at the school regarded Australians as "colonials" who were "backward" and put Woodruff in a year level one year lower than appropriate. He won a government scholarship to the University of Melbourne and Queen's College, a university residential college. He decided to take up medical studies at the end of his third year of undergraduate study, but his parents wanted him to finish his degree first. Despite his fears regarding his ability to succeed as an engineer, Woodruff placed first in his graduating class with first class honours. He also completed two years of the maths program with first class honours. While stationed at the River Valley Road prisoner of war hospital in Singapore in 1945, with the supplies of chemical anæsthetics severely restricted by the Japanese, Woodruff and a medical/dental colleague from the Royal Netherlands Forces successfully used hypnotism as the sole means of anæsthesia for a wide range of dental and surgical procedures. At the conclusion of World War II, Woodruff returned to Melbourne to continue his surgical training. During his studies, he served as the surgical associate to Albert Coates. This position was unpaid, so Woodruff accepted an appointment as a part time pathology lecturer to support himself.

Soon after his marriage, Woodruff travelled to England to take the second half of the FRCS Exam. Woodruff took his new wife over with no guarantee of employment, and declined a two year travelling fellowship to Oxford University offered by the Australian Red Cross because it required him to return home and work. Before departing, he applied for a position as a Tutor of Surgery at the University of Sheffield, and learned en route that they had accepted his application. He took the FRCS exam in 1947 and passed—a result that, in Woodruff's view, was not hindered by the fact that one of his examiners, Colonel Julian Taylor, had been with him at Changi. He took advantage of this access and his wife's skills as a lab assistant to investigate in utero grafts (tissue grafts performed while the recipient was still in the womb). At the time, the surgical community hypothesized that if a recipient were given in utero grafts, he would be able to receive tissue from the donor later in life without risk of rejection. Woodruff's experiments with rats produced negative results. While in Aberdeen, Woodruff also visited the United States on a World Health Organization (WHO) Travelling Fellowship. During the visit, he met many of the leading American surgeons, an experience that increased his own desire to continue his work and research. After returning from the US, Woodruff experimented with the effects of cortisone and the impact of blood antigen on rejection. As part of his blood antigen studies, Woodruff found two volunteers with identical blood antigens and arranged for them to exchange skin grafts. When the grafts were rejected, Woodruff determined that rejection must be controlled by additional factors.

In 1957, Woodruff was appointed to the Chair of Surgical Science at the University of Edinburgh without requiring an interview. Woodruff thought that he had to be vigilant with his first kidney transplant, as he regarded the British medical community's attitude to be conservative towards transplantation. The corresponding Lister Oration, given at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, was delivered on 8 April 1970, and was titled 'Biological aspects of individuality'. The success of Woodruff's clinical transplant program was recognised and enhanced by funding from the Nuffield Foundation to construct and open the Nuffield Transplant Surgery Unit at the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh. In 1970 an outbreak of hepatitis B struck the transplant unit, resulting in the death of several patients and four of Woodruff's employees due to fulminant hepatic failure. Woodruff was deeply shaken by the loss and the unit was closed for a period while an investigation was carried out to develop a contingency plan to avoid such a disaster in future. The unit then resumed operations. and joined the MRC Clinical and Population Cytogenetics Unit. He spent the next ten years there, engaged in cancer research with an emphasis on tumour immunology using Corynebacterium parvum. During that time, Woodruff also published twenty five papers and two books. Woodruff also held office in several scientific organisations, serving as Vice President of the Royal Society and President of The Transplantation Society. Finally, Woodruff served for many years as a WHO advisor and as a visiting professor at a number of universities. Despite his profound influence on transplantation and what Peter Morris called "a commanding presence in any gathering", Woodruff wrote eight books during his career, covering numerous aspects of medicine and surgery. Deficiency Diseases in Japanese Prison Camps. M. R. C Special Report No. 274. H. M. Stationery Office, London 1951. Surgery for Dental Students. Blackwell, Oxford. (Fourth Ed., 1984 with H. E. Berry) 1954. The Transplantation of Tissues and Organs. Charles C. Thomas. Springfield, Illinois 1960. The One and the Many: Edwin Stevens Lectures for the Laity. Royal Society of Medicine, London 1970. On Science and Surgery. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 1976. The Interaction of Cancer and Host: Its Therapeutic Significance. Grune Stratton, New York 1980. Cellular Variation and Adaptation in Cancer: Biological Basis and Therapeutic Consequences. Oxford University Press 1990. Nothing Venture Nothing Win. Scottish Academic Press 1996. (autobiography)

In 1946 Woodruff married Hazel Gwenyth Ashby. The Woodruffs had two sons, followed by a daughter. Their first son completed a civil engineering degree at Sheffield University, where the daughter also attended, completing a science degree in botany. The second son did a medical degree at University College London and became an ophthalmologist. Woodruff and his wife were avid tennis players and had a court in their home in Edinburgh. After moving to Edinburgh, Woodruff took up sailing with the Royal Forth Yacht Club, and went on to compete in some races. He owned a boat and was known to go sailing on it in the Mediterranean each summer with his wife. During his student years, Woodruff was a keen rower and field hockey player.