From pathology teaching to the Dunn building
Pathology teaching at Oxford began in the late nineteenth century at the University Museum of Natural History. James Ritchie became the first lecturer in 1897, and a dedicated building opened in 1901. Trustees of Sir William Dunn’s estate funded a new home in 1922. It opened on 11 March 1927, when the department took the Dunn name. The School is an academic department rather than an Oxford college.
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Penicillin as a treatment
Howard Florey became head in 1935 and assembled a team combining chemical, biochemical and experimental skills. They investigated purification and antibacterial effects in living organisms. In 1941 penicillin was used to treat the policeman Albert Alexander. He initially improved but died after supplies ran out, exposing the need for reliable production as well as therapeutic evidence.
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Immunity and cell biology
The department’s later work included James Gowans’s studies of lymphocyte recirculation in 1959 and Edward Abraham and Guy Newton’s research on the isolation of cephalosporin C in the 1950s, with their isolation paper published in 1956. Henry Harris subsequently used cell fusion to investigate gene expression and tumour suppression, linking pathology with immunology, cell biology and drug research.