The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
Obstetrics expert dies aged 100
Ian MacGillivray, emeritus regius professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Aberdeen University, has died aged 100.
He devoted a lifetime to the study of eclampsia in twin pregnancies and was appointed president of the International Society for the Study of Hypertension in Pregnancy in 1976.
Four years later, he was appointed president of the International Society for Twin Studies.
During the war, Prof MacGillivray served with the Navy as a surgeon on a troopship, mainly in the Indian Ocean.
Born in Kirkintilloch, in 1921 he went to Vale of Leven Academy and was granted a Carnegie Scholarship to study medicine at Glasgow.
After the war, while at the Royal Maternity and Women’s Hospital in Glasgow, Ian became fascinated by the high incidence of eclampsia in twin pregnancies.
He was appointed senior lecturer at Bristol University, and then in Aberdeen in 1955 before establishing the London University department of obstetrics and gynaecology at St Mary’s Hospital.
When Professor Sir
Dugald Baird, Regius Professor of Midwifery in Aberdeen, retired in 1965, Ian succeeded him until he retired in 1984. He was dean of the Faculty of Medicine from 1976-79.
He was visiting professor to many universities around the world.
Professor MacGillivray also spent time in centres in India on behalf of World Health Organisation.
On retiring he and his wife Edith spent six months in Cape Town analysing the obstetric records at the Groote Schur Hospital and published papers with Professor Dennis Davey.
On return, to Bristol, he was made an honorary research fellow in the departments of obstetrics and child health and showed that cerebral palsy was more common in twins than single babies.
Prof MacGillivray acted as an expert witness in cases of pre-eclampsia and cerebral palsy in the UK and in Australia until 2000.
The MacGillivray Academic Centre At Aberdeen University is named after him.
Prof MacGillivray was predeceased by his wife Edith and is survived by a son, twin daughters, four grandchildren and twin great-grandsons.