This biography was compiled by Dawn Elder and is based on secondary sources.
Contents
1921 graduate
Sylvia Gytha de Lancey Chapman gained her MD in 1934 as part of her specialty training. Her research for her thesis on the subject of perinatal toxaemia laid the foundation for the discovery of the Rh factor. (1)
She went on to have a distinguished career in New Zealand and Britain, including as part of a committee of inquiry into abortion in New Zealand (1936–37); offering advice that led to the establishment of the Family Planning Association (1936); being the first woman appointed to the senate of the University of New Zealand (1938); and fostering the establishment of the New Zealand Council of Organisations for Relief Service Overseas (1944).
In Britain, she did clinical work and became the registrar of the newly formed College of General Practitioners. Sylvia Chapman died in 1995.
Reference:
Esther Irving, “Sylvia Gytha de Lancey Chapman,” in Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, 1998, https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/4c17/chapman-sylvia-gytha-de-lancey.
