Respiratory medicine lost one of its greats on Saturday 17 February, when Professor Ann Woolcock died from breast cancer, aged 63. To the very last days of her life, Ann pursued the goals of her life with the energy and dedication which had been the hallmark of her personality and professional career. She was a provocative and original thinker whose life in science and academic medicine left an unrivalled legacy which will continue to inspire respiratory scientists and clinicians. Her ability to marry clinical medicine and research was exceptional and led naturally to increasing demands on her time as a speaker and contributor to scientific and clinical meetings nationally and internationally. Despite her frantic schedule, she never gave up clinical medicine and she was still doing her outpatients clinics in the last month of her life, farewelling some of the patients she had looked after for nearly 30 years. She firmly held the view that she could only ask the right questions in her research, if she continued to be involved in clinical medicine. She would often come to her clinic straight off an early morning plane.

Ann Woolcock was born in Reynella, SA, the eldest of four children, and completed her University education at the University of Adelaide. She began her distinguished career in research at Sydney University after her residency in Adelaide and Broken Hill. While completing her Doctor of Medicine degree she set up a respiratory laboratory in the Page Chest Pavilion at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, which was a natural evolution of her research, bringing science to clinical respiratory medicine. Ann’s work in respiratory physiology completely revised the prevailing understanding of mechanisms and consequences of acute asthma. In 1968 she married Ruthven Blackburn, professor of medicine, Sydney University. She then completed physician training and her sons Simon and Angus were born.

Although she undertook further highly influential work on the physiology of airway obstruction in acute asthma, Ann’s research interests broadened, epidemiology becoming a more demanding interest. Her early studies of allergy and asthma in the New Guinea Highlands were followed by studies in schoolchildren in Sydney and rural NSW. These formed the basis of ongoing research looking at the relationships between the development of sensitivity to allergens, airway responsiveness and the development and severity of clinical asthma in children. She became a driving force in asthma epidemiology and this work brought her great international distinction and respect. It also emphasised the relevance of population health studies to the practice of clinical medicine and she never lost an opportunity to make population health relevant to the individual.

Many asthma epidemiology projects around Australia were conceived by Ann and flourished under her leadership. In 1977 she was appointed Head of the Department of the Department of Respiratory Medicine at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, and in 1984 she was given a personal chair as Professor of Respiratory Medicine, University of Sydney. This was at a time when women had negligible representation in the upper echelons of tertiary teaching, research and administration, and only 3% of all professors in Australian Universities were women. In 1992, she was elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, the first practising female clinician to earn this distinction.

Ann was committed to promoting respiratory health in the Asia-Pacific region, and was active on many national and international scientific and public health committees. From this vantage point she was able to see the big picture and instantly exhorted others to do the same. She initiated Asthma Research Days in Sydney, when she worked hard to bring people together in research, to discuss their ideas, to encourage collaboration and to share scientific skills. On these days the white board was covered with research ideas and she engaged people in spirited debate over important clinical and research questions. She fostered the research and careers of many PhD students she supervised, among whom are Stephen Leeder, later Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Sydney University, and Professors lven Young and Norbert Berend. She was particularly supportive of women in science and medicine. She established the Institute of Respiratory Medicine at RPAH with a vision for co-operative, integrated research and she was dedicated to helping people work together in a team to achieve common research goals. Her presence could be daunting, as tact was not a strong point and she could not hide her exasperation if an argument was poorly supported or work was half hearted. Consistent with this, she gave support and respect to all those who applied themselves with diligence and enthusiasm. She cared greatly for the people in her department and research groups, and was always keen to bring people together to party and celebrate important events.

Ann was acknowledged as one of the world’s leading experts in asthma. Characteristic of her addresses to widely varying audiences was both the promotion of scientific knowledge and a bold questioning of conventional wisdom. There was a substantial element of the iconoclast in her and she was never afraid of sticking her neck out. She had a reputation, well earned, for challenging the party line and for provoking others to think beyond accepted truths.

Ann Woolcock was the recipient of many distinguished awards in Australia and overseas and was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 1989. She probably underestimated the affection so many held for her, the wealth of knowledge she left with us, and the very high regard in which she was held. Her dedication and advocacy, her feisty spirit and vision are unforgettable. Her extended fraternity in medicine extend their deep sympathy to her family, especially her husband Ruthven and her sons Simon and Angus.