Diana Beck was among the first female neurosurgeons in the world, and almost certainly the first in the UK. She is commemorated with a blue plaque at 53 Wimpole Street, where she lived when at the peak of her career.

Early life and education

Diana Beck was born in Chester in 1900, and after winning prizes at school she studied medicine at the London Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine for Women. She won several prizes during training and graduated in 1925.

As a young doctor, Beck held various posts: house surgeon at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital and at the Cancer Hospital, Fulham; case officer at the Queen’s Hospital for Children, Hackney; clinical assistant in the Ear Nose and Throat Medical and at the Gynaecological Department at the Royal Free.

By 1930 Beck was the senior house surgeon at the Royal Free Hospital. She became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1930 and of England in 1931. She later became the surgical registrar, demonstrator in anatomy and lecturer in surgical and applied anatomy, also at the Royal Free.

Specialising in neurosurgery

By 1939 Beck decided to specialise in neurosurgery and studied at Oxford in the newly established Nuffield Department of Surgery. She was awarded a scholarship by the Royal Society of Medicine, which enabled her to work with the pathologist Dorothy Russell. Beck prolonged her stay in Oxford to treat soldiers injured in the war and she also carried out research and teaching at the newly established school at the Radcliffe Infirmary.

In 1943 Beck was appointed consultant neurosurgeon to the Royal Free Hospital but could not take the job – due to the war, she was first needed at Chase Farm Hospital in Enfield and then in Bristol as consultant adviser in neurosurgery to the Emergency Medical Service.

Consultancy and Wimpole Street

Beck was elected consultant neurosurgeon at the Middlesex Hospital, London, in 1947, and created and ran the neurosurgical department. This was a great achievement: she was the first woman to be appointed to a senior clinical position at any of the major London teaching hospitals, which at that time admitted only male students, and the first neurosurgeon on the Middlesex staff.

Beck was generally popular with staff, students and patients. She was known for being meticulous and painstaking, which had been especially necessary in the pre-penicillin days of her earlier career. One of her high-profile patients at the Middlesex was AA Milne, of Winnie the Pooh fame. He had suffered a stroke in 1952 and Beck performed a lifesaving operation on him.

From 1948, Beck lived in a late Georgian terraced town house dating from 1775–6 at 53 Wimpole Street, half a mile away from the hospital. This served as her home and her consulting rooms until early in 1955. Her landlord and co-occupant was Stanley L Drummond-Jackson, who introduced intravenous anaesthesia in dentistry. The area had long been popular with medical professionals and Wimpole Street had previously been home to neurologist JS Risien Russell, nursing reformer Ethel Gordon Fenwick and surgeon Sir Frederick Treves.

Research, disability and death

Beck did groundbreaking work on the neurosurgical treatment of brain bleeds. She published significant research papers on neurosurgery in academic journals and she lectured in Europe, Canada and the United States. She was an active member of the Society of British Neurological Surgeons, and for two years was president of the London Association of the Medical Women’s Federation.

In addition to her practice and research expertise, Beck had personal experience of living with a neurological condition. She had the rare, chronic autoimmune disease, myasthenia gravis, symptoms of which include muscle weakness and fatigue.

After an operation to alleviate her symptoms, Beck suffered a blood clot and died suddenly and unexpectedly in the Middlesex Hospital, aged only 55, on 3 March 1956.