Camden New Journal - Obituary: Professor Gertrude Falk

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Camden New Journal - OBITUARY
Published: 20 March 2008

Professor Gertrude Falk

UCL professor who fought save the NHS

PIONEERING scientist Professor Gertrude Falk, whose funeral was held in Golders Green on Monday, was a campaigner for the National Health Service and for peace in the Middle East to the end. The first woman to hold a professorial chair at the Physiology department at University College London’s medical school, Professor Falk never ceased to protest at what she saw as the threats to the NHS posed by creeping privatisation.
As a signatory of Jews for Justice for Palestinians and of British Friends of Peace Now, she repeatedly affirmed her support for both the state of Israel and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the occupied territories.
And from her home in Hampstead Hill Gardens, she spent decades as a stalwart of the Hampstead Labour Party, throwing herself into fundraising and campaigning until, as fellow members described it, “the party moved away from her”.
Colleagues at UCL this week remembered Professor Falk as a dynamic character who continued to teach long after her retirement. She had joined UCL as a Guggenheim Fellow in 1961 from the University of Washington and remained ever since, working on the structure of muscles with her colleague and then husband Professor Paul Fatt and going on to work on the retina.
But it was for her passionate defence of the health service, and implacable opposition to the intrusion of commerce, that campaigning colleagues remember her.
She opposed the Foundation Trust status of UCLH, warning that it would force medics to “follow the money”.
Last year, she wrote to the New Journal about cuts to mental health budgets in Camden: “Many of the most vulnerable of our society will be left without support. Desperate people commit desperate acts!”.
Professor Falk died aged 81 after a short illness. She leaves a daughter, Ilse, and two grandchildren.

PAUL KEILTHY

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