Harry Angelman
{{Short description|British paediatrician (1915–96)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=December 2023}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Harry Angelman
| image = Harry Angelman.jpg
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| birth_date = 13 August 1915
| birth_place = Birkenhead, England
| death_date = {{death date and age|df=yes|1996|8|8|1915|8|13}}
| death_place = Portsmouth, England
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| spouse = Audrey
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| nationality = British
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Harry Angelman (13 August 1915 – 8 August 1996) was a British consultant paediatrician who identified and named Angelman syndrome.
Biography
Angelman was born in Birkenhead in 1915. He qualified in Liverpool in 1938. Angelman was an enthusiast for the language and country of Italy. He observed three unrelated children who showed similar symptoms of severe intellectual disablement, lack of speech, motor disorders, and happy demeanours. He was in two minds as to whether he should publish his findings, but he described seeing a painting whose name seemed to characterise the symptoms he had observed. The painting showed a laughing boy with a puppet and was by the Renaissance artist Giovanni Francesco Caroto. His 1965 paper described what he called "puppet children", inspired by the painting.{{cite journal|doi=10.1111/j.1469-8749.1965.tb07844.x|last=Angelman|first=Harvey|year=1965|title='Puppet' Children: A report of three cases|journal=Dev Med Child Neurol|volume=7|issue=6|pages=681–688|s2cid=53730099}}
His paper was not immediately recognised as important, but later discoveries of similar children led to the idea of renaming the condition Angelman syndrome. An American Angelman Syndrome Support Group was started in Waterlooville, Hampshire, in 1986.{{cite web |title=Harry Angelman {{!}} RCP Museum |url=https://history.rcplondon.ac.uk/inspiring-physicians/harry-angelman |website=history.rcp.ac.uk |access-date=14 December 2024}}
Angelman travelled to talk about his discovery and his work was mentioned as important by U.S. President Bill Clinton. Angelman died due to a colon tumour.{{cite journal |journal=British Medical Journal Publishing Group |author1=Audrey Angelman |author2=Robert Todd |title=Obituaries: Harry Angelman, Shevan Abdul, Karim Ayoub, Walter Calvert, Sheila Mary Ross Dronfield (née Williams), Jean Lilian Hallum, Edward Harford-ReesFrank Edward Hobbs, Air Vice Marshall Thomas ("Tom") Conchar Macdonald, Thomas Goronwy Owen, Alex Norman Barron Stott, Basil Strickland, Jennifer Ann Thomson (née Chown) |url=http://www.bmj.com/content/314/7075/231.extract |access-date=14 December 2024 |pages=231 |language=en |doi=10.1136/bmj.314.7075.231 |date=18 January 1997}}
References
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Category:People from Birkenhead
Category:British paediatricians
Category:20th-century British medical doctors
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