P C Elmes 1921 - 2003

Former director Medical Research Council pneumoconiosis research unit, Llandough Hospital, south Wales, and Whitla professor of therapeutics and pharmacology Queen's University, Belfast. Peter became interested in chest medicine in 1950 and spent 1952-55 as MRC research fellow studying DNA in sputum. Appointed as senior lecturer in therapeutics and pharmacology at Queen's University, Belfast, he continued important studies on cross infection in hospital wards and bacterial resistance to antibiotics and the effects of cigarette smoke on lung pathology. He helped carry out a unique survey of men who had worked in the Belfast shipyards and confirmed work that exposure to asbestos was a cause of mesothelioma. In 1976 he became director of the MRC pneumoconiosis unit in south Wales, leading research into asbestos-like minerals and other industrial dust-induced diseases.

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC338146/