Allan William Abramson was a consultant paediatrician in Ayrshire. He was born in Cairo, Egypt, the son of Albert Abramson, a colonial administrator, and Mabel Jessie née Harrison, the daughter of a shop owner. He was educated at St Lawrence College in Ramsgate, Kent, and went on to Cambridge and then St Thomas’s Hospital.
He held house physician and house surgeon appointments at the Bristol Royal Infirmary between 1936 and 1937. For two years, from 1938, he was a resident medical officer in Leicester and from 1940 to 1944 he was in London, as a resident medical officer at the West Middlesex County Hospital.
In 1944 he was appointed to his consultant paediatrician post in Ayrshire, based at Ayrshire Central Hospital and Seafield Children’s Hospital. He set up a network of paediatric outpatient clinics, which continue today. He had no consultant colleagues until 1969 and had no junior doctors until 1947.
Outside medicine, he had several hobbies, including sailing, gardening, photography and travelling, often with his caravan. He sang in a church choir. He married Morag née Dods, a former obstetrician, in 1950. They had two sons and a daughter.
RCP editor
[Brit.med.J.,2000 321 836]