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Abdurahman, Abdullah  

Mohamed Adhikari

South African medical doctor and politician, the most significant political leader of the South African Coloured community during the first half of the twentieth century, was born in Wellington near Cape Town on 12 December 1872. He was the eldest son of nine children born to Abdul Rachman, a greengrocer, and his wife Kadija Dollie. Descended from grandparents who were manumitted slaves, his graduation as a medical doctor from the University of Glasgow in 1893 was a signal achievement. After two years of postgraduate study in London, he returned to Cape Town in 1895.

Abdurahman entered public life in 1904 when he became the first black person to be elected to the Cape Town City Council. Except for 1913–1915 he represented Wards 6 and 7 District 6 for the rest of his life Abdurahman exerted substantial influence on local government because of the exceptional support he enjoyed ...

Article

Aboulker, José  

Jeremy Rich

was born on 5 March 1920 in Algeria. Both his parents were Jewish and were notable figures in their own right. Aboulker’s father, Félix, was a surgeon and the leader of the centrist Radical Party in Algiers. Berthe Bénichou-Aboulker was one of the first Algerian women to publish a novel and the author of numerous poems. Because after 1879 Algerian Jews became French citizens by an act of the French parliament, Aboulker had the opportunity to receive an advanced education, unlike other Algerians. After completing his primary and secondary education, Aboulker planned to continue in the family profession of medicine, but the outbreak of World War II in Europe in 1939 forced him to postpone his education. He enlisted in a French regiment of spahis at Miliana in Ain Delfa province in northwest Algeria. However, the French government surrendered to the Germans in 1940.

The establishment of a pro ...

Article

Aku, Martin Andréas  

Jeremy Rich

Togolese medical doctor and politician, was born on 2 September 1913 in Lomé, the capital of the West African German colony of Togo. His parents belonged to a Ewe-speaking community. His father, Andréas Aku, was the first Togolese head of the Protestant Church of Togo and had been ordained by German missionaries. His mother was Caroline Aku.

Naturally, Aku attended Protestant missionary schools in Lomé from 1920 to 1928 The German Protestant pastor Gottfried Stoevesandt was so impressed with Aku s intellectual ability that he invited him to attend secondary school in Germany His relatively poor but influential parents agreed For the handful of Togolese students able to continue their education in Europe between World War I and World War II the medical field was the most attractive subject of their studies Aku passed the German baccalaureate examinations and then with the support of the Bremen Protestant mission entered ...

Article

Baikie, William Balfour  

James McCarthy

Scottish explorer, naturalist, surgeon, and philologist who opened up the Niger region to European trade and influence, was born in Kirkwall, Scotland, the eldest son of a Royal Navy captain, John Baikie. He was educated for a time at Kirkwall Grammar School in Orkney, but mainly privately, in company with his cousins. He gained a medical degree from Edinburgh University, where he also developed his interest in natural history. In 1848, together with Robert Heddie, he wrote the first part of a published study of the natural history of Orkney, Historia naturalis Orcadensis. In the same year he joined the Royal Navy as an assistant surgeon, serving on no less than five different ships in the Mediterranean before being appointed in the same capacity to Haslar Hospital, Portsmouth, from 1851 to 1854. It was from here in 1854 that through the patronage of the influential Sir Roderick ...

Article

Bankole-Bright, Herbert Christian  

Jeremy Rich

politician and medical doctor, was born to Jacob Galba Bright and Laetitia (Williams) Bright on 23 August 1883 in the town of Okrika, a settlement in the eastern Nigerian Niger Delta region, roughly 30 miles from Bonny. His father belonged to a Yoruba family that had been rescued from a slave ship and resettled in Wellington, a small town on the outskirts of the Sierra Leonean capital of Freetown. Herbert's father was a trader, although he had tried but failed to become a doctor early in life. Bankole-Bright lived in relatively affluent circumstances thanks to his father, who had developed a successful business career. Bankole-Bright attended a private primary school in Freetown and then enrolled at the Methodist Boys High School for his secondary education. Around 1904 he graduated from the Methodist school and began his own medical career. He became an apprentice of W. Awuror Renner one ...

Article

Barnard, Christiaan Neethling  

Anne Digby

South African surgeon who carried out the world’s first human-to-human heart transplant, was born into an impoverished Afrikaner family at Beaufort West, South Africa, on 8 November 1922. His father, the Reverend Adam Hendrik Barnard, was a clergyman of the Dutch Reformed Church for Coloured, or mixed-race, people, and his mother was Maria Elisabeth de Swart. He was educated at Beaufort West High School before training as a doctor at the University of Cape Town’s medical school, where he graduated MB, ChB, in 1945. Having done his internship at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, he worked for a short time as a rural general practitioner in Ceres, in the western Cape, before returning to Cape Town to become senior medical officer at City Hospital and then registrar at Groote Schuur Hospital. In 1953 he gained his MD for his dissertation The Treatment of Tuberculosis Meningitis Later ...

Article

Bin, Shaykh, Tawhida  

Julia A. Clancy-Smith

Tunisian physician, was born to an old, well-known family of Tunis. Her widowed mother played a pivotal in her education starting from primary school. Both Tawhida and her sister were enrolled in the School for Muslim Girls, an academic institution prized for its first-class education, which had opened in 1909 in the family’s neighborhood. During the 1920s in Tunis while Bin Shaykh attended secondary school the feminist movement took off and was marked by a watershed event in 1924 Manubiya Wartani a young Tunisian woman attending a public conference devoted to the question of feminism and women s rights removed her veil and stood up in the crowd to make a speech At about the same time Bin Shaykh had a chance encounter that would utterly change the course of her life she made the acquaintance of a respected French physician Dr Etienne Burnet and his Russian wife Lydia ...

Article

Brahim, Mariam  

Jeremy Rich

Chadian medical doctor, was born on 16 June 1956 in the eastern Chadian city of Abéché Her parents were Brahim Djadarab and Fatimé Fadoul She had four siblings her brother Issa Michel and her sisters Khalié Sadié Ibni Oumar Mahamet Saleh and Rakié The entire family attended primary school in Abéché and Brahim excelled in her education Her family supported her studies and she completed her secondary education at the Lycée Franco Arabe at Abéché Her father pressured her to study English but she found the language impractical in eastern Chad Even so she learned the language which would later prove to be extremely useful when she lived in Canada Her commitment to school impressed her Chadian and foreign teachers Missionaries and her family also strongly encouraged her Since there were no final classes to prepare for the baccalaureate examinations in Abéché in the early 1970s she had to ...

Article

Carrol, Annie Maria “Pet”  

Hassoum Ceesay

was born in Bathurst (now Banjul) on 15 May 1931. She was the daughter of Wilfred Davidson (W. D.) Carrol (1900–1941), a lawyer educated at the University of Oxford, and Marguerite (Margot) Blain (d.1933), a French-speaking Gambian called an “accomplished woman” by a Bathurst columnist. The Blains and the Carrols were at the opposite ends of the strict social hierarchy in Edwardian Bathurst, the capital of The Gambia colony: the Carrols were Aku elite, Methodist, and well educated with a particular taste for Bordeaux wine and yearly holidays in the United Kingdom; the Blains were middle-class Catholics of Metis extraction with roots in St. Louis, in present-day Senegal. Carrol was given the informal, affectionate name “Pet,” by which she became known throughout her life.

When Annie was born her father was a highly respected and active member of the tiny Bathurst educated elite He ...

Article

Clot, Auguste Barthélemy  

Geoffrey Roper

French surgeon and medical administrator in Egypt, was born at Grenoble on 5 November 1793, the son of Louis Clot and Marie Bérard. He studied medicine in Montpellier and at the Hospice de la Charité in Marseilles, where he subsequently practiced as a surgeon. There he was recruited in December 1824 by agents of Muhammad ʿAli, who invited him to join the group of European technocrats assisting in the modernization of Egypt in the 1820s. Of these he was probably the one who left the greatest and most lasting legacy of improvement and reform in his particular sphere of operation. His writings also made a contribution to the knowledge of contemporary Egypt in nineteenth-century Europe.

On 11 February 1825 Clot took up his position as surgeon in chief and in 1827 established the first modern medical school in Egypt at Abu Zaʿbal where European medical knowledge and practice ...

Article

Coll-Seck, Awa Marie  

Jeremy Rich

Senegalese medical researcher and government minister of health, was born in 1951 in Dakar, Senegal. She attended primary and secondary schools in Dakar, where she drew attention because of her aptitude for science and her athleticism. She played on the Senegalese national women’s basketball team in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Coll-Seck received a medical degree from the University of Dakar in 1978 and commenced her medical practice the same year. She worked as a doctor in hospitals in the French city of Lyons as well as her hometown of Dakar in the late 1970s and the 1980s.

In 1989 Coll-Seck was named to the faculty of the medical school of the University of Dakar and chief medical officer of infectious diseases at the Dakar public hospital. In the 1990s Coll Seck was noticed by the international medical and public health community for her ...

Article

Cooper, Henry Nehemiah  

Adell Patton

Liberian physician and medical educator, was born to a Liberian settler class family in the capital city of Monrovia, Montserrado County, Republic of Liberia, West Africa. He was the fourth son and fourth child of Charles Henry Cooper and Maryann Dabadolo Cooper née Johnson. In his formative years Cooper resided at the Cooper family estate in Kormah, Clay-Ashland, and in Monrovia. His formal education began at the Mary McGritty Elementary School in Monrovia, and later he attended high school at the College of West Africa, Monrovia, from which he graduated in 1944.

In pursuit of higher education, Cooper enrolled at Clark College (a historically black college) in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1946. In 1950 Cooper graduated magna cum laude with the degree of bachelor of science. In that same year Cooper entered Meharry Medical College (another historically black college) in Nashville, Tennessee. He graduated in 1954 with the ...

Article

Dadoo, Yusuf Mohamed  

Peter Limb

known popularly as “Mota” (Gujerati term of affectionate respect) or “Doc,” South African communist, liberation movement and Indian leader, and physician, was born in Krugersdorp in 1909 to Muslim Indian immigrants Mohamed and Amina, who in 1904 started a business in Krugersdorp. The son of a prosperous merchant, racial segregation soon affected Yusuf as he traveled daily to working-class Fordsburg to attend Indian-only schools.

After early schooling, he left for India, matriculating at Aligarh Muslim College, where Gandhi’s anticolonial movement left a deep impression. Refusing to enter the family business, in 1929 he moved to London to study medicine and got involved in anticolonial politics. His father insisted he move to Edinburgh to avoid politics, and in 1936 Dadoo graduated with Glasgow and Edinburgh medical degrees, but his political involvement with the Independent Labour Party and Indian National Congress intensified as he began to read Marxist literature.

In 1936 ...

Article

Delaney, Emma B.  

Brandi Hughes

nurse, foreign missionary, and school founder, was born to Anna L. Delaney and Daniel Sharpe Delaney in Fernandina Beach, Florida. Emma Beard Delaney came of age in the postbellum generation that witnessed the collapse of Reconstruction and the fading of the early promise of African American emancipation. Against the rising tide of segregation and racial violence, however, Delaney's family managed to sustain a measure of economic security and educational advancement. Her father, Daniel, held the distinction of being the only African American helmsman commissioned for service on the Revenue Cutter Boutwell, a federal ship that patrolled the ports of Savannah, Georgia; Jacksonville, Florida; and Charleston, South Carolina, as a forerunner of the U.S. Coast Guard. The unique benefits of her father's government employment enabled the Delaney family to support an expansive education for Emma and her sister, Annie. In 1889 shortly after completing secondary classes ...

Article

Diagne, Adolphe  

Jeremy Rich

was born on 17 October 1907 in Paris, France, to Blaise Diagne, a highly influential Senegalese politician, and Marie Odette Villain, who was originally from French Guiana. Adolphe received his name in honor of Blaise Diagne’s mentor, Adolphe Crespin. His brother Raoul went on to be a star footballer. He had another brother, Roland, who became a railroad employee. His father was an agent of the French customs service when Adolphe was born, but was elected in 1914 to the French parliament as a representative for the French West African Quatre Communes, coastal towns that were granted full voting rights in 1848.

Diagne spent much of his early life in France and developed an interest in medicine by the time he completed his secondary education. He enrolled in the Ecole Principale du Service de Santé de la Marine in 1927 and earned a doctorate in medicine After ...

Article

Diop, Majhemout  

Donna A. Patterson

Senegalese politician, pharmacist, and author, was born in Saint-Louis, Senegal, on 30 September 1922. His father worked as a colonial official, and his mother was a homemaker. In 1935, Diop’s father died; his mother followed two years later, leaving Diop, aged fifteen, and his four siblings orphaned. The death of his parents kindled a desire to excel in his studies, and after completing his secondary education in Saint-Louis and Dakar, Diop was admitted to French West Africa’s School of Medicine and Pharmacy.

The curriculum at the School of Medicine and Pharmacy was abbreviated during the early years, with initial terms of three and fours years of study. Despite the initial brevity, graduates from these programs were extensively trained in local hospitals and clinics. Likewise, in his memoirs (Mémoires de luttes: Textes pour servir à l’histoire du Parti Africain de l’Indépendance, 2007 Diop describes his training ...

Article

Dlamini-Zuma, Nkosazana Clarice  

Helene Strauss

antiapartheid activist, medical doctor, and South African politician, was born in KwaZulu-Natal on 27 January 1949, the eldest of eight children. In defiance of popular practice at the time, her father, a rural Catholic schoolteacher, insisted that she receive a formal education. She was sent to Adams College in Amanzimtoti (then called the Amanzimtoti Zulu Training School) where she completed high school in 1967. She earned her BSc with majors in zoology and botany from the University of Zululand in 1971, before moving to the University of Natal to work as a research technician and to study medicine. Here she became involved with student politics, working as an underground operative for the African National Congress (ANC), and, alongside fellow University of Natal student Steve Biko, serving as a member of the South African Students Organisation, to which she was elected as deputy president in 1976 the ...

Article

Easmon, John Farrell  

Jeremy Rich

medical doctor in Sierre Leone, was born on 30 June 1856 in Freetown, Sierra Leone. His father, Walter Richmond Easmon, was a wealthy member of a black family that had originally fled from the United States during the American Revolution to Nova Scotia, Canada, and after the end of the American Revolution to Sierra Leone. The Easmon family was among the first group of African Canadians to settle in 1792. His mother, Mary Ann McCormack, originally was born in Ulster in 1794; her father was a successful lumber trader who lived in Sierra Leone from 1813 to 1864 and who also came from a medical family. John’s half brother, Albert Whiggs Easmon, studied medicine at Edinburgh University.

John Easmon attended primary school at the Roman Catholic mission in Freetown His fellow students would become leading figures of the Afro Canadian and Afro Caribbean settler community elite in West ...

Article

Easmon, Raymond Sarif  

Jeremy Rich

medical doctor and playwright in Sierra Leone, was born on 15 January 1913 in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone. The Easmon family was prominent among the Freetown elite and was descended from the black American and Canadian settlers who moved from Nova Scotia to Freetown in 1792, only five years after the foundation of this small British colony. His father, H. C. F. Easmon, was one of the most highly regarded African doctors in Sierra Leone, and his paternal grandfather, James Farrell Easmon, was one of the first Africans to work as a Western-trained doctor in Sierra Leone and Ghana. Easmon recalled how hard his father struggled to battle the influenza epidemic that ravaged Freetown in 1918 and 1919 He recalled in the 1980s Father had literally to doctor the whole city Easmon was educated at the Prince of Wales secondary school in Freetown before he moved ...

Article

El Saadawi, Nawal  

Elisabeth Bekers

Egyptian feminist, physician, fiction writer, and political activist, was born in the village of Kafr Tahla, near Cairo, Egypt, on 27 October 1931. She was the second of nine children born to al-Sayed El Saadawi (1897–1959), a peasant family’s son who became an inspector in the Ministry of Education, and Zayneb Hanem Shoukry (1913–1958), daughter of an impoverished feudal family descending from Grand Vizier Talaʿat Pacha of Istanbul. Both of her parents were anxious to have their daughters as well as their sons educated. Nawal El Saadawi began her schooling at Muharram Bey Girls’ School in Alexandria, where the family briefly lived until al-Sayed was transferred to the small district town of Menouf in the Nile Delta in punishment for his participation in anti-British and antiroyal demonstrations. From 1938 until 1948 the El Saadawis remained in Menouf where Nawal attended the English primary school Despite his aversion to ...