Geoffrey Mottram Durbin | The BMJ – GWC Mag

Geoffrey Mottram Durbin (“Geoff”) was born into a family steeped in socialism. His mother studied under Hugh Gaitskell and his father, Evan, was a Labour MP and minister in Atlee’s postwar government, who sadly drowned when Geoff was just 3 years old.

Geoff studied medicine at New College, Oxford, and completed his clinical training at University College London.

In 1973 he became a research fellow in Osmund Reynolds’s team at UCL, one of the early pioneers of intensive care for babies, particularly those born prematurely. Geoff was at the heart of this work from the very start, undertaking research into continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy for hyaline membrane disease, and on identifying …