Who was Dawes?

 
Geoffrey Dawes (1918-1996) was a formidable man with a big presence. His life work was the study of fetal and neonatal physiology in lambs which could be investigated while they remained in utero, after the insertion of catheters to study different aspects of their circulatory, cardiac, pulmonary or brain functions. For this he gained an international reputation, many awards and other formal recognition of his achievements and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He studied in Oxford University during the 2nd world war, completed his medical training but was rejected for military service because of asthma. His future in Oxford was decided, when in 1948 he was appointed the first and surprisingly youthful director of the newly formed Nuffield Institute for Medical Research in Oxford where he worked for the next 37 years.

He was one of the first to observe that the fetal lamb had sleep cycles as well as breathing movements in utero, and within a short time confirmed that the human fetus behaved similarly.

He became involved with me in 1977 at a small meeting in Oxford, when I informally presented myambitions to computerise the fetal heart rate recorded on a clinical CTG. Geoffrey rejected the idea outright as unachievable but was later persuaded by me that it could be done, After that he set to work, driven by his restless intellect and energy. It was not long before very small and simple desktop computers were recordingand analysing the outputs from Hewlett Packard CTG devices. 

He was a skilled mathematician and enjoyed the numerical challenges of describing the complexities of human fetal heart rate patterns. He was fascinated by the need to understand the physiological mechanisms underlying the short and long term variations in the heart rate of the healthy human foetus and the ability to use changes induced by spontaneous hypoxaemia to detect fetal distress in utero and made these concepts an in integral part of the ‘Dawes-Redman’ diagnostic system. He retired in 1985, but in fact did not ‘retire’

Instead he continued his work on our system. I presented him with endless clinical problems from the high risk unit, as reflected in the CTG traces while he sought mathematical ways of describing them. Then we clinically tested how they performed. He was a familiar figure in the department of Obstetrics at the Oxford John Radcliffe Hospital, participated in clinical case conferences and continued to chide his clinical colleagues for their preference for subjective impressions rather than objective numerical measurements of fetal heart rate patterns. 

He was always open to new ideas, had a precise and detailed memory and an unremitting dislike for thoughtlessness and ignorance. His encounters with the latter stimulated his asthmatic wheeziness. It was a familiar signal of his mood when he suddenly delved into his pocket to find and start puffing on his inhaler. He enjoyed international meetings and was still much sought as a speaker until his final year. With his scholarly intellect, great integrity and questing spirit, he was also a kind and humorous man who appreciated and helped younger researchers and thrived in the company of like-minded scientists around the world. He enjoyed fly fishing and gardening. 

On Friday 3 May 1996 he dropped into my office briefly to discuss what to do next. As ever he was excited by the possibilities and keen to move on as quickly as possible. In the early hours of the following Monday, without warning, he had the massive stroke that killed him later that day.

To the end of our collaboration it was as if I was one of his ‘students’ and he my mentor. Our DR-CTG system is his splendid memorial.

Chris Redman 16/01/21