13th September 1923 – 17th July 1987 expert in survival and space medicine, and flight surgeon to the Apollo/Soyuz Mission

Group Captain Dr Peter Donald George Venus (P.D.G.V.) Whittingham was born in South Shield on 13th September 1923. He would be educated at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle, before attending the Newcastle School of Durham University to study medicine. After graduation he would join the Royal Airforce in 1948, serving in the Medical Service for 30 years and would eventually retire as a Group Captain.

Whittingham would work at the RAF Institute for Aviation Medicine, located on the Farnborough Airfield, and this work would make him an expert in survival medicine. He would be involved in the study of a wide range of subjects including marching in flying boots, pressure suits, flying clothes for tropical weather, water deprivation, emergency rations and other problems of survival. Much of this research was undertaken on himself, and on several occasions, he would suffer from the bends and chokes. Beyond this work, he would also lecture for the other parts of the British military as well the U.S. Airforce, Commonwealth Committee on Defence, NATO and several other organisations. In 1959 he would be awarded an OBE for his work.

In 1955, he co-authored a proposal to introduce pressure suits into the RAF, including specific details of recommended equipment, which was subsequently referred to by the Manchester company P Frankenstein & Sons Ltd in their development of a full pressure flying suit for sub-orbital flight.

In 1975 he was seconded to NASA and was later he was appointed as a flight surgeon on the joint American-Soviet Apollo/Soyuz Mission. He was the first and only British doctor to be appointed to this role. Following the end of this mission would also be a consultant to the European Space Agency between 1976 and 1978.

As a result of his varied work, P.D.G.V. Whittingham was a member of the Association of Flight Surgeons and the International Academy of Aviation and Space Medicine.

On 17th July 1987, he would die in Aldershot at the age of 63.