Hertford College, Oxford Taken by Brian Jeffery Beggerly

‘A review of Harris’s work reads like a chapter in the history of endocrinology. The control of the multiple activities of the pituitary gland, and the study of the reciprocal interactions of brain and endocrine glands are the topics he had made his own. Step by step Harris contributed building stones to our present knowledge, always making sure that his ground was unshakeable before proceeding to the next step. He was one of the founders of the subject of neuroendocrinology.’

Marthe Vogt’s obituary in Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, vol. 18 (1972), published a year after Harris’s pre-mature death in 1971, points to his huge contribution to endocrinology.

Harris came to Oxford in 1962, succeeding Wilfrid Le Gros Clark as Dr. Lee’s Professor of Anatomy, and becoming a Fellow of Hertford College. He was an effective and popular teacher of anatomy, raising its profile, and contributing to the development of the new Physiological Sciences Final Honour School, which brought together for the first time, the five preclinical departments of anatomy, biochemistry, pathology, pharmacology and physiology. His teaching extended to include endocrinology as a special subject. In the same year he was appointed Honorary Director of the Medical Research Council’s Neuroendocrinology Research Unit in Oxford. Here he continued his scientific research: attempting to isolate the luteinizing hormone releasing factor, and studying the effect of gonadal hormones on the sexual differentiation of the brain. He also continued to practise clinical medicine at the Littlemore Hospital, where he was Honorary Consultant, investigating gonadal and pituitary hormones in psychiatric patients.

His papers held in the Bodleian Library, were catalogued by the Contemporary Scientific Archives Centre in 1973. They contain an extensive set of his laboratory notebooks, covering almost the whole of his career, as well as research data and a large volume of lecture notes. The catalogue of his papers has recently been enhanced and is now available directly from the Bodleian’s Western Manuscript Online Catalogue pages.