Month: August 2019

The view of an old St Mary’s man

Professor Peter Sever reflects on his time studying and working at St Mary’s Campus and looks forward to the new vision for the Faculty of Medicine.


I spent three wonderful years as a student at St Mary’s Hospital Medical School and have spent most of my professional life on the Mary’s Campus. Initially in the old Medical Unit with Sir Stanley Peart on the third floor of the Medical School, moving to the top floor of the QEQM building when it opened in 1987, then to offices in North Wharf Road. Finally, when they bulldozed down the North Wharf buildings, I was resettled in splendid new accommodation at the Hammersmith Hospital, in the Imperial College Translational and Experimental Medicine Building.

As one of the oldest Mary’s men still working, it came as a culture shock after so many years at Mary’s to decamp to the heart of the Hammersmith – an institution with which, for so many years in the past, we competed fiercely!

The move has been a great success and I realised that it’s people, not buildings that are important in the modern world. Bringing together clinicians and researchers, working together in their different disciplines, in new purpose-built accommodation, that provides them with the best opportunity to carry out their scientific programmes and look after their patients, is a goal to which we should aspire.

One of the problems I have experienced over many years has been the fragmentation of clinicians and scientists working across several campuses in a far from efficient way, when consolidation of our enormous talents on single sites would have benefited all. If we are going deliver the best research and the best patient care we must look hard at the geography of our institutions and plan for the optimal way in which we can achieve our goals. (more…)