Paul Fildes

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OBE FRS
Paul Fildes, in navy uniform
Paul Fildes, as painted by his father, Luke Fildes in 1919
Born
Paul Gordon Fildes

(1882-02-10)10 February 1882
Died5 February 1971(1971-02-05) (aged 88)
Alma materTrinity College, Cambridge
AwardsFellow of the Royal Society[1]
Royal Medal (1953)
Copley Medal (1963)
Scientific career
InstitutionsUniversity of Cambridge

Sir Paul Gordon Fildes

Second World War.[2][3][4]

Biography

Early life

Fildes was born in

MB BCh
degree.

Career

Fildes served as a

Officer of the Order of the British Empire
.

After working at the

London Hospital as an assistant bacteriologist, he moved in 1934 to work at the Middlesex Hospital. He was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1934.[1]
In 1940 he helped Donald D. Woods discover how sulphonamides worked.

He was a member of the scientific staff,

Medical Research Council
(1934–49).

World War II

Fildes asserted that he assisted with

botulin toxin.[5] The story has been met with scepticism, given the absence of any indication that Heydrich displayed any of the highly distinctive symptoms of botulism.[6]

In 1940 Fildes was put in charge of a newly created department, the Biology Department, Porton (BDP) at Porton Down to study the defensive implications of a bacterial attack and there built up a team of microbiologists to study the use of biological weapons, including anthrax and botulinum toxin. An early project was the creation of a stockpile of a million anthrax impregnated cattle cakes to be used in a possible retaliatory attack. In 1942 it famously carried out tests of an anthrax bio-weapon developed at Porton Down at Gruinard Island. He also assisted with the anthrax strain tests on Gruinard Island, performing necropsies on the bodies of anthrax-exposed sheep, to determine if they had died as a direct result of anthrax poisoning. This work produced the world's first working anthrax bomb in the summer of 1942.[7]

At the end of the war he returned to university life and handed over control of the department to his deputy

Microbiological Research Department. He was knighted in the 1946 New Year Honours.[8]

Later years

After the war Fildes worked at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology in Oxford, headed by Nobel Prize winner Sir Howard Florey, to study on the biochemistry of bacteriophage T1 (and to a lesser extent, T2) multiplication.[9]

Fildes received the Copley Medal in 1963 from the Royal Society.

Works

He was the author of works on haemophilia and syphilis.

References

  1. ^
    PMID 11615726
    .
  2. ^ Fellow list of the Royal Society
  3. ^ Portraits of Paul Fildes at the National Portrait Gallery, London
  4. ^ Paul Fildes at Pasteur.fr Archived 2 September 2006 at the Wayback Machine
  5. ISBN 0-8129-6653-8
    .
  6. PMID 20506755. Retrieved 29 May 2009.[permanent dead link
    ]
  7. ISBN 0231129424
    ).
  8. ^ United Kingdom list (1): "No. 37407". The London Gazette. 28 December 1945. p. 2.
  9. S2CID 17390162
    . Retrieved 18 June 2017.
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