Aubrey Lewis

Aubrey Julian Lewis was born on 8 November 1900 in Adelaide, the only child of Jewish parents George Solomon Lewis ( – 23 May 1931), an English accountant known only as George Lewis, and his South Australian-born wife Rachel "Ré" Lewis, née Isaacs ( – ), a sister of Levi Isaacs, prominent member of Adelaide's Jewish community. Ré and Levi were among six children who were brought out to South Australia from Newcastle upon Tyne by their parents Solomon Isaacs (c. 1830 – 30 August 1913) and his wife Pauline (c. 1830 – 14 July 1923) aboard the ship Sophia around 1865[1] George Lewis married Ré Isaacs, elocution teacher and Adelaide Synagogue's longtime Sabbath School teacher, at the Synagogue on 16 August 1899.[2]

Lewis was educated at Christian Brothers College, Wakefield Street, Adelaide, where he proved to be a gifted pupil. He studied medicine at the University of Adelaide and graduated with distinction in 1923 (M.B., B.S.).[3]

Lewis worked at the Royal Adelaide Hospital for two years and undertook anthropological research on Aboriginal Australians. In 1926 he accepted a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship in psychological medicine. This brought him to the Phipps Clinic under the mentorship of Adolf Meyer, whom he respected and admired greatly, and whose work he praised in lectures such as the Adolf Meyer Lecture in 1960.[4] This was the start of two years postgraduate study performed in the US and thence on to Germany. Lewis then moved to the United Kingdom and joined the staff of the Maudsley Hospital London in 1928. In 1931 he received his M.D. from the University of Adelaide and in 1936 he became Clinical Director of the Maudsley Hospital.[4] In 1938 he became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians.

Lewis was a member of the Eugenics Society. A chapter he contributed to a 1934 book on 'The Chances of Morbid Inheritance', edited by Carlos Blacker, has been described as 'remarkable for its total admiration for the German work and workers", including Ernst Rudin.[5]

• Knighthood (1959)
• International Member of the American Philosophical Society (1961)[6]
• Honorary fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (1972)

On 22 February 1934 at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, Marylebone, London Lewis married Hilda North Stoessiger, a child psychiatrist. Hilda died in 1966 which affected Lewis greatly. They had two daughters and two sons, all of whom survived Lewis. Lewis died on 21 January 1975 in Charing Cross Hospital, London. A memorial service was held in April at the Synagogue in which he had been married.

Lewis had an austere appearance, captured in Ruskin Spear's official portrait of 1966. But to those who knew him his high standards of personal and professional integrity went with a warm, kindly, humorous disposition which earned him the affection of colleagues and friends.[3] Michael Shepherd described him as a "representative man" in Emerson's sense of the term.[7]

• The State of Psychiatry; Inquiries in Psychiatry (London, 1967)
• The Later Papers of Sir Aubrey Lewis (Oxford, 1977)

• M. Shepherd and D. L. Davies (eds), Studies in Psychiatry (London, 1968);
• M. Shepherd, A Representative Psychiatrist (Cambridge, England, 1986);
• M. Shepherd, Sir Aubrey Lewis (Melbourne, 1991); Psychiatry and Social Science Review, 3, 1969, p 6;
• Journal of Psychiatric Research, 17, 1983, p. 93;
• The Times (London), 22 January 1975;
• Advertiser (Adelaide), 10 March 1990.

• A pioneering partnership: Aubrey and Hilda Lewis