Personal Life
Black met Hilary Joan Vaughan (1924–1986) at a ball at university in 1944 and the couple married in 1946 upon his graduation. He described her as the "mainspring" of his life until she died aged 61 in Surrey. The couple had a daughter, Stephanie, born in 1951. Black remarried in 1994, to Professor Rona MacKie. Black was a very private man who was averse to publicity and was horrified to discover he had won the Nobel Prize.
Black died, aged 85, on the morning of 22 March 2010 after a long illness. His death was announced by the University of Dundee, where Black served as Chancellor from 1992 to 2006. His funeral was held on 29 March at St. Columba's Church, London. He is buried at the Ardclach cemetery, a parish established in 1655, near Nairn, Scotland. Upon hearing of Black's death, Professor Pete Downes, Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Dundee said Black "was a great scientist, but he was also a great man to know" while the BBC said he was "hailed as one of the great Scottish scientists of the 20th Century". He was described by The Daily Telegraph as the man who earned the most for the pharmaceutical industry through his drug development, though he received little personal financial gain from his work.
In 2010 the Bute Medical School of the University of St Andrews, where Black had studied his initial degree in medicine, announced that an honorary 'Sir James Black Chair of Medicine' would be created. This post remained unfilled for the reminder of the academic year 2009-2010. In September 2010 the first Chair of Medicine at the ancient University was given to Professor Stephen H Gillespie MD, DSc, FRCP (Edin), FRC Path, who left his post as Professor of Medical Microbiology at UCL.
The creation of this chair marks one of the milestones in the University of St Andrews 600th Year Anniversary in 2013- making it the third oldest University in the English speaking world.
Read more about this topic: James Black (pharmacologist)
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