Professor Winifred Cullis

A BLUE plaque could be erected in Blooms­bury in honour of the first woman professor in a British medical school.

The Physiological Society has applied for the work of Professor Winifred Cullis to be marked outside the Hunter Medical Centre, in Hunter Street, which was once the home to the Hospital School of Medicine for Women.

There, Professor Cullis was head of department in physiology and became a pioneering woman in British medicine. She became one of the society’s first woman members, elected in 1915, served on its committee and later presided over a meeting of the society, before dying in 1956.

The plaque will be part of the society’s own scheme and it is aim­ing to erect it on the Grade II-listed build­ing on November 19.

Mary Arbuthnot from the society said: “Cullis achieved great renown and lectured all over the world as an energetic advocate for the role of science in healthy living, the value of education in emancipating both sexes and for international goodwill.”