Britain’s first female neurosurgeon commemorated with blue plaque

Britain’s first female neurosurgeon has been commemorated with a blue plaque, 99 years after becoming a doctor. 

The English Heritage plaque dedicated to Diana Beck was unveiled yesterday at her former home and consulting rooms in Wimpole Street, Marylebone.

Ms Beck lived at 53 Wimpole Street from 1948 to 1954, during the majority of her time at Middlesex Hospital, where – as its very first neurosurgeon – she created and ran a neurosurgical department. 

Ms Beck achieved many more firsts in her career. She was one of the first female neurosurgeons in the world and was said to be ‘very conscious, and also proud’ of being the first woman appointed to senior clinical position at any of the major London teaching hospitals. 

Dr Susan Skedd, Blue Plaques Historian at English Heritage, said: “At the time that Diana Beck chose to specialise in neurosurgery, it was a very new and revolutionary field of medicine. 

“For a woman, it was even more ground-breaking. It seems most fitting that she should be commemorated at her home in Wimpole Street, where she lived during the pinnacle of her career, just half a mile from Middlesex Hospital.”

It was also while living in Wimpole Street that Ms Beck operated on her most famous patient, Winnie the Pooh author and fellow blue plaque recipient, A. A. Milne, who suffered a stroke in 1952. 

Her former home is part of Westminster’s Harley Street Conservation Area, a premium medical area since the middle of the nineteenth century. 

Although there are already six plaques in Wimpole or Upper Wimpole Street, only one of them is to a woman – Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, later Browning. 

Pictured top: Britain’s first female neurosurgeon, Diana Beck (Picture: The Medical Women’s Federation)