Norman Wettenhall was born at Farnborough, England, and died in Melbourne following a fall and severe head injury. His father was Roland Ravenscroft Wettenhall (Foundation Fellow RACP qv 1) and his mother Jane Vera Creswick – both families long-established in Australia. On 18 April 1947 Norman married a Sydney physiotherapist, Joan Leslie Lamb, and they had four children, Gilbert, Jane, Adam and Helen. At the outbreak of war in August 1914 Roland Wettenhall and his wife were in England and he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps. The family returned to Australia in 1916 and he transferred to the Australian Army Medical Corps.

Norman was at Glamorgan Primary School in Toorak (1922-29) and then a boarder at Geelong College (1930-34). His mother had died in 1928, which had a profound effect on him. He had a strict Presbyterian upbringing both at home and at school. Throughout his life he was a great supporter and benefactor of his old school, being a councillor for over 30 years and chairman from 1969-1977.

He was a member of the State Committee of the College 1968-72, Censor in Paediatrics (1967-71) and a member of the Specialist Advisory Committee in Endocrinology 1976-8.

I first met Norman when we were medical students. We were taught by that great anatomist, Frederic Wood Jones and through him we became members of a group exploring some of the Bass Strait Islands. Norman’s interest in sea birds was apparent. He graduated in Medicine in 1940 and was on the resident staff of the Royal Melbourne Hospital before joining the Royal Australian Navy. He saw service in the cruiser Shropshire and destroyer Nepal and while his ship was in East African waters he became severely ill with a blood disorder which caused him to be hospitalised for three months in Durban, and subsequently invalided out of the Navy.

In 1944-45 he was resident registrar of the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne: and thus began a life long association with that institution as a physician and, from 1972-80, as head of the newly formed Endocrinology Unit.

He did post graduate work in England (1947-49) and became interested in paediatric endocrinology when working at the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street. He followed up this interest in 1956 with a four-month stint at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore.

Wettenhall was not a prolific writer. He wrote some articles on growth hormone therapy and contributed chapters to several books including “The Tall Child” in Brook CSD, Clinical Paediatric Endocrinology (Blackwell Scientific Publications (1981).

Wettenhall was particularly interested in children’s growth and was early in the field of treating the very short and the predictably very tall. He was involved in trials of pituitary derived growth hormone for the short. Prospectively tall girls, who wished to limit their height, participated in the first world trial of di-ethyl stilboestrol (DES) as a growth retardant. He reported a 15 year follow up of these cases in 1975 and while some height reduction was achieved many of the young women had significant side effects. Now, 25 years later, the long-term effects of prolonged hormone treatment in women are very much in question.

At a time when his professional life was very busy he became increasingly involved in public affairs. At various times from about 1960 he was associated at board level with the National Trust of Australia, the Australian Conservation Foundation, the Museum of Victoria, the World Wild Life Fund, Geelong College, Heide Museum of Modern Art and particularly the Royal Australian Ornithologists’ Union (Birds Australia) where he did much to bring about the publication of The Handbook of Australian, New Zealand and Antarctic Birds (HANZAB). He had a great talent for attracting funds and was associated with much of the $5 million dollars collected for this project. Five volumes of this ornithological masterpiece have been published and the remaining two volumes are being completed in his memory.

During his long life he was an ardent collector of what has been described as “the best collection of Australian national history ever assembled” including a superb set of Gould’s Birds of Australia. This was valued in the superb catalogue at $385,000 when the collection was sold in 1995 to establish the Norman Wettenhall Foundation, aimed at “the protection maintenance and understanding of Australian living nature and the environment and habitat within which it exists, with particular emphasis on bird life”.

He was a man of great energy and commitment, talkative, a consummate networker, generous, gregarious and a devoted family man. His wife Joan, and their four children survived him.

In my opinion he will be best remembered for the work he put into the creation of the Bird Atlas (HANZAB). This is the most comprehensive book on the subject ever published. It will be in constant use, worldwide, for many years and without a doubt will be his most enduring memorial.