Frederick Andrewes was born at Reading, the eldest son of Charles James Andrewes, J.P, a business man, and his second wife Charlotte Parsons. He was educated at Oakley House School, Reading, and Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated with first-class honours in natural science in 1882. A year later he was awarded the Burdett-Coutts scholarship for geology, and in 1886 he was elected to the Sheppard fellowship at Pembroke College. He had begun his clinical training at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in 1885, and two years later he took the degree of B.M, having also paid a brief visit to Vienna. He then held junior appointments in St. Bartholomew’s and was elected assistant physician to the Royal Free Hospital. He developed an increasing interest in pathology and bacteriology, which he studied under Klein and Kanthack, and in 1897 succeeded Kanthack as lecturer on pathology and pathologist at St. Bartholomew’s.

In his thirty years’ tenure of the appointment, which was given the title of professor in 1912, he saw the department, which consisted originally of a single laboratory, expand into the splendour of a three-storeyed building. His own reputation increased contemporaneously both through his influence as a teacher and expert and on account of his original research on the classification of streptococci, the histology of lymphadenoma, and the problems of immunity. He was an early member of the Medical Research Council and during the 1914-1918 War accomplished valuable work on dysentery bacilli, receiving the O.B.E. in 1919 and a knighthood in 1920. At the Royal College of Physicians, he was Dobell Lecturer in 1906, Croonian Lecturer in 1910 and Harveian Orator in 1920. Andrewes had an unusual capacity for lucid exposition; he was an unassuming, friendly man with an entertaining sense of humour. He married in 1895 Phyllis Mary, daughter of John Hamer, J.P, publisher, and had a son, C. H. Andrewes, F.R.S, F.R.C.P, and a daughter. He died in London.

G H Brown

[Lancet, 1932; B.M.J., 1932; D.N.B., 1931-40, 14; Al.Oxon., I, 23]