Professor Sir Desmond Pond
1978–1981
Professor Sir Desmond Pond was president from 1978 to 1981.
He graduated from Clare College Cambridge in Natural and Moral Sciences and trained in medicine at the University College Hospital. He was awarded a Rockefeller Studentship to study at Duke University in North Carolina, USA.
His primary interest was in psychiatry and from 1948 to 1952 he was Senior Lecturer in the Department of Neurophysiology at Maudsley Hospital. From 1952 to 1966 he was consultant psychiatrist at Maudsley and University College Hospitals. In 1966 he was appointed the first Professor of Psychiatry at the London Hospital and he remained there until 1982. He was the founder member of the Institute of Religion and Medicine in 1964.
He delivered the Goulstonian Lecture to the Royal College of Physicians in 1961 on the subject of the Psychiatric Aspects of Epileptic Brain-damaged Children
He was a member of the Royal Medico Psychological Association, a predecessor body of the College from 1947, and became a foundation fellow of the College in 1971. From 1963 to 1965 he was chairman of the Child Psychiatry Section, and from 1970 to 1974 chairman of the Joint Working Party with Royal College of the General Practitioners (RCGP) on psychiatric training for General Practitioners.
Professor Pond was a member of the Neurosciences Board of the Medical Research Council from 1968 to 1972, and chief scientist of the Department of Health and Social Services from 1982 to 1985
He was knighted in 1981 and elected an honorary fellow of the College in 1982.