Owen Conor Ward

Owen Conor Ward's father was a general practitioner and later Parliamentary Secretary for Public Health. He graduated M B in University College Dublin in 1947 and trained in paediatrics and paediatric cardiology in the University of Liverpool, taking his doctorate in 1951. He was admitted to the Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland in 1959 and later to Fellowship of the Glasgow and London Royal Colleges and of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. He is an Honorary Fellow of St. Mary’s University College. He retired as Professor of Paediatrics in UCD and paediatric cardiologist to Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in1991, and was appointed RCSI Visiting Professor of Paediatrics in Tabuk in Saudi Arabia.

Returning to London he was Honorary Paediatrician to Kingston Hospital and enrolled as a mature student of medical history, taking his PhD in 1999.. The Royal Society of Medicine Press published his biography of Dr John Langdon Down, receiving an award from the British Society of Authors. His historical papers have been largely on Victorian medicine, on the history of paediatrics in Liverpool and in Dublin and on the development of services for learning disability. He was the Foundation Dean of the Faculty of Paediatrics of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland. Having been Patron of the Down’s Syndrome Association of Ireland he went on to be Chairman of the Langdon Down Centre Trust in Normansfield, London, the UK Down’s Syndrome Association. base and the headquarters of the World Down Syndrome Association.

We thank André Trombeta and Sandra Maltby for information submitted.

• John Langdon Down. A caring pioneer.
  The Royal Society of Medicine Press, London, 1998.