Dr Michael Simpson Dunnill 1928-2026

With great sadness, we announce the loss of Michael Simpson Dunnill MA MD FRCP FRCPath (1928-2026).

Michael, who joined Merton as a Fellow in 1967 shortly after his appointment as Director of Clinical Studies in the University Medical School and was elected an Emeritus Fellow in 1995 following his retirement, was an eminent pulmonary and renal pathologist and medical educator. 

From Bristol Grammar School he attended medical school at the University of Bristol and did National Service in the Highland Light Infantry before arriving in Oxford in 1956 as a graduate clinical assistant in the department of pathology. His research interests were focused on the pulmonary pathophysiology of emphysema. In 1960 he was made a consultant physician at the Radcliffe Infirmary and at the same time offered a research fellowship at Columbia University to work with the Nobel laureates André F. Cournand and Dickinson W. Richards who performed the first (safe) cardiac catheterization at the Bellevue hospital in New York City. Michael worked closely with Cournand, who much admired his work and offered him a post at Columbia. However, he was committed to Oxford and returned to take up his consultancy under the leadership of Sir George Pickering, Regius Professor of Medicine. Pickering encouraged Michael to be involved in advising on the foundation of the medical school in Nottingham, which cemented his interest in medical education and led to his becoming Oxford’s Director of Clinical Studies. 

He was influential in increasing the number of clinical students by encouraging tutors in Cambridge to send their best pupils to Oxford for clinical training and modernizing the 2nd BM course to embrace continual assessment. He was offered chairs in Nottingham and Leicester but preferred the coal face of Oxford clinical academic life. Indeed, acquired cystic disease in the kidney was first described by Michael in Oxford where his work paved the way for improved renal transplantation.   He was a great supporter of the pre-clinical and clinical schools coming together for common purpose via medical education, and to this extent was a long serving member of the medical society the ‘Circle of Willis’. Meanwhile he continued with distinguished research and publication in pulmonary and renal pathology. After he retired, he became a prolific writer in medical history, producing The Plato of Praed Street; a life of Almroth Wright and William Budd: Bristol's greatest physician, and for many years continued to contribute to undergraduate admission at Merton.

Michael was a whole-hearted contributor to College governance. At different times he served as Subwarden, Secretary to the Harmsworth Trust, Steward of the Common Room and Wine Steward. He did all these jobs with warmth, wisdom, attention to detail and a crisp but gentle wit. Until very recently he was a regular worshipper in College Chapel where generations of students learnt to recognise him as the genial Emeritus Fellow who would make his way up and down the steps to the Fellows’ stalls even when, latterly, he found it hard.

The College extends its heartfelt condolences to Michael’s family and friends.