Owen Wade (physician)

Owen Lyndon Wade CBE FRCP (1921-2008) was a British medical researcher and academic, described by the Royal College of Physicians as "one of the founding fathers of clinical pharmacology and therapeutics in the UK".^[1]

Wade was born in Penarth, South Wales, on 17 May 1921, to Katie Jones and James Owen David Wade, the latter a surgeon.^[1]

He was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge and University College, London,^[1] and subsequently worked as a clinical assistant at the Pneumoconiosis Research Unit from 1948 to 1951.^[2] He was pointed as a lecturer in medicine at the University of Birmingham in 1951, rising to Senior Lecturer.^[2] In 1957, he became Whitla Professor of Therapeutics and Pharmacology at Queen's University, Belfast.^[2] In 1971 he returned to Birmingham, in the post of Professor of Therapeutics and Clinical Pharmacology, from which he retired in 1986.^[2] He was also dean of Birmingham Medical School from 1978 to 1984.^[2] Immediately on appointment he had to deal with the aftermath of a smallpox outbreak there.^[1] He oversaw the modernisation and 1981 relaunch of the British National Formulary.^[3]

Wade's autobiography was published in 1986.^[2] He was a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (FRCP) and was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1983 Birthday Honours.^[4]

He died on 10 December 2008.^[1]