The College is sad to announce that Professor John Allen Davis, M.A., M.D., FRCP, Emeritus Fellow of Peterhouse, Emeritus Professor of Paediatrics, James Spence and Hunterian Medallist, Dawson Williams Prizewinner, died on 4 May 2025, aged 101 years.

A celebration of the life of Professor John Allen Davis will be held in Peterhouse on Saturday 18 October 2025. The Service will be held in the Chapel from 2 p.m. with reflections in the Theatre at 3 p.m. and Tea at 4.15 p.m.

All who remember John are warmly invited. 

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John Davis had been Professor of Paediatrics in the newly created Clinical School in the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Peterhouse for somewhat more than three years when he stated to the present writer that there are two years in life when one is most likely to die: the first and the last.  He has now given personal proof both of his scientific conclusion and of his mischievous humour by fulfilling the second assertion on 4 May, 2025, aged 101.

He was born on 6 August, 1923, the son of Major H.E. Davis, M.C., and Mrs Mary Winder Davis (née Allen).  He was a Scholar at Blundell’s School, Tiverton; at St Mary’s Hospital Medical School (Scholar; M.B., B.S. 1946; London University Gold Medal); he further studied at the University of Manchester (M.Sc. 1967); he was created M.A. Cantab. in 1979, and gained the M.D. 1988.  He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1967.

His working life began with Army Service, B.A.O.R., 1947–49.  He was a House Physician at St Mary’s Hospital, 1947; Great Ormond St Hospital for Sick Children, 1950; Registrar/Senior Registrar, St Mary’s Paediatric Unit and Home Care Scheme, 1951–57; Senior Assistant Resident, Children’s Medical Centre, Boston, Mass., and Harvard Teaching Fellow, 1953; Nuffield Research Fellow, Oxford, 1958–59; Senior Lecturer, Institute of Child Health, and Reader, Hammersmith Hospital, 1960–67; Professor of Paediatrics and Child Health, Victoria University of Manchester, 1967–79; Professor of Paediatrics, Clinical School, University of Cambridge, 1979–88, then Emeritus; Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, 1979–88, then Emeritus.  He was Second Vice President, Royal College of Physicians, 1986. He was awarded the Dawson Williams Prize, B.M.A., 1986; James Spence Medal, B.P.A., 1991; Hunterian Medal, Hunterian Society, 1995.

Professor Dixon (Peterhouse: Fellow in Medicine, 1986-2008; Master, 2008-16) writes: ‘He was always amused that, following years of trying to persuade the various paediatric factions in Manchester to join forces, the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital finally came about after his retirement; but it is one of his great legacies.  Both in Manchester and Cambridge he was viewed as one of the real father-figures of paediatrics and was responsible for training many of the future leading paediatricians at home and abroad.  His interests in paediatrics were wide but mainly centred on neonatal care and the first few years of life.  He was particularly concerned with integrated child health and the rôle of paediatrics in primary care; he wrote about the place of birth and difficulties faced by one-parent families.  He was responsible for bringing Colin Morley, amongst others, as a young lecturer to Cambridge.  John’s help was crucial in supporting the development and subsequent adoption of Colin’s artificial surfactant to help respiratory function in premature babies. In Peterhouse he initiated the now flourishing Peterhouse Medical Society.  John’s interests were extensive and he much enjoyed talking to numerous Fellows about subjects ranging from literature to philosophy.  In later life he published numerous books of his poems.’

His publications included: Scientific Foundations of Paediatrics (editor and contributor), 1974 (2nd edition, 1981); Place of Birth, 1978; (edited jointly) Parent-Baby Attachment in Premature Infants, 1984, reprinted 2015; Mortalia and Other Things (verse), 2003, 2nd edition 2016; Historiae et Fabulae (short stories), 2008.  He considered his recreations to be collecting and painting watercolours, gardening, reading, and music.

He was generous with his time for good causes and wise in his practical observations.  He was instrumental in establishing Bridget’s hostel for handicapped children in Cambridge, was supportive of music and musicians, and gave beneficently to his College’s staff fund.  He served as the College’s governor of Hinchingbrooke School from 1992 to 1996.  He also had a humility rarely found amongst Fellows.  Once, thinking of his College’s needs ahead of his own advantage, mindful of a dictum of another then Fellow, the late Maurice Cowling, namely that Professorial Fellows ‘are like manure, more useful spread thin than in a heap’, Davis put his money where his mouth was and offered to vacate his Fellowship to make room for another professor in whom he believed and whose election to Peterhouse he advocated.

He married, first, 1957, Madeleine Elizabeth Vinicombe Ashlin (author with D. Wallbridge of Boundary and Space: introduction to the work of D. W. Winnicott, 1981): she died in 1991: of this marriage there were three sons and two daughters.  He married, second, 2004, Professor Ann-Louise Kinmonth.

John Davis was by nature benevolent, with an urbane and socially conscious compassion.  About a quarter of a century ago he wrote, in conclusion to a longer piece:

‘The voters have elected Brown and Blair.
Mais plus ça change: things go on as before
The rich are always with us, like the poor.
Only a child expects things to be fair
Look on their works, ye lowly, and despair.’

© P. Pattenden.