Behind the Frieze
Twenty-three names form the frieze on the exterior of the School. Mystery surrounds the reasoning behind their selection which was made by a committee of unknown constitution who pondered deeply on which of the names of the great and good in the fields of hygiene and tropical medicine merited such public acclaim.
The only female name on the short list was that of Florence Nightingale, who was excluded because her surname of eleven letters was too long for inclusion. However room was found for the name of Max von Pettenkofer (count the letters!) who denied that cholera was a water-borne disease!
The arrangement of the brief biographies that follow is chronological, as the lives of some of their subjects interwined. Please click on a name to see a short biography of each individual.
- Thomas Sydenham 1624-1689
- Sir John Pringle 1701-1782
- James Lind 1716-1794
- Johann Peter Frank 1745-1821
- Edward Jenner 1749-1823
- Lemuel Shattuck 1793-1859
- Sir Edwin Chadwick 1800-1890
- William Farr 1807-1883
- Sir John Simon 1816-1904
- Max von Pettenkofer 1818-1901
- Edmund Alexander Parkes 1819-1876
- Louis Pasteur 1822-1895
- Baron Lister of Lyme Regis 1827-1912
- Timothy Richards Lewis 1841-1886
- Robert Koch 1843-1910
- Sir Patrick Manson 1844-1922
- Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran 1845-1922
- Walter Reed 1851-1902
- William Crawford Gorgas 1854-1920
- Sir David Bruce 1855-1931
- Sir Ronald Ross 1857-1932
- Hermann Michael Biggs 1859-1923
- Sir William Leishman 1865-1926
Each biography contains an image, these were digitised from photographs which have been mounted onto boards for an exhibition and therefore we have no way of discovering the copyright owner from the photograph itself. We have started to research the copyright owner of each photograph but if you are aware of the copyright owner for any of the above images we would appreciate hearing from you.
Behind the Frieze was published by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 1995, text by Mary Gibson.
