Charles O'Morchoe:CHARLES O'MORCHOE, who died last month at his home in Poulsbo, Washington State, in the US, 19 days short of his 80th birthday, was one of the most eminent Irish physicians and medical scholars of the last century.
O’Morchoe, a graduate of Trinity College Dublin’s medical school, became, after his emigration to the US in 1968, successively professor of anatomy at the University of Maryland, the Stritch School of Medicine at Loyola University in Chicago and the Urbana-Champaign campus of the University of Illinois, where he was also professor of surgery and dean of the medical school.
In India, he worked as a visiting professor of physiology and as a consultant for the World Health Organisation at Jaipur in 1967 and again in 1971. A specialist in lymphology, he established a global reputation in this field, which culminated in a term as president of the International Society of Lymphology during 1993-95.
As author or co-author, O’Morchoe published 89 scholarly articles and 95 research abstracts. In research, he was often in effective partnership with his wife, Patricia Jean O’Morchoe (neé Richardson), a Yorkshire woman who entered Trinity College also to study medicine, the same year as O’Morchoe, 1949.
The O’Morchoes’ common interests were such that their son David, also a medical doctor, told The Irish Times that “their research was often tied together... particularly with regard to their graduate students”.
In teaching, O’Morchoe concentrated on anatomy, his wife on histology and pathology.
Their marriage was characterised almost by a common fate: they met at university, married shortly after graduating, worked closely together professionally, retired together and then, tragically, learned almost simultaneously that they both had contracted cancer. Jean died in 2003.
In recognition of his achievements, O’Morchoe was conferred with a DSc from his alma mater in 1981, having earlier obtained both the MD and PhD degrees there in 1961 and 1968 respectively. In 1966, he was elected a Fellow of Trinity College.
Charles O’Morchoe was born in 1931 in Quetta, India, (now in Pakistan) into a family both ancient Gaelic and Anglo-Irish. His father, a colonel in the old Indian army, was the hereditary clan chief of the O’Morchoe or Murphy clan, a title now held by his brother, Maj Gen David, The O’Morchoe, head of the Royal British Legion in the Irish Republic.
Charles O’Morchoe’s grandmother was a member of the famous Joly scientific family; his grandfather, Charles Jasper Joly, was Ireland’s astronomer royal and a Fellow of the Royal Society; his granduncle John Joly was professor of geology at Trinity College Dublin.
This was an academic heritage which O’Morchoe was to honour with the establishment – with $300,000 of his own money (matched by the University of Illinois) – of the Joly-O’Morchoe Exchange Fellowship, which allows students of the University of Illinois, both medical students and those studying medically-related sciences, to study at TCD.
The O’Morchoe brothers survived the catastrophic Quetta earthquake of 1935, when they were pulled, shaken but unhurt, from underneath bricks after their bungalow collapsed.
Thereafter, they lived in Dublin at 21 Raglan Road, with their Joly grandmother, and later in Co Wexford with relatives on a farm.
Charles O’Morchoe was educated at Aravon School and Wellington College in England, before entering TCD. After graduation and marriage, he and his wife practised in Halifax, before returning to Trinity in 1957, where his career culminated in his appointment as associate professor of physiology in 1967.
A marked aspect of his subsequent career in the US was his dedication to medical charity. He and his wife established and funded the Patricia J and Charles CC O’Morchoe Leadership Skills Award Fund. He was also a board member of the Disabled Citizens’ Foundation in his adopted home of Urbana-Champaign.
In retirement beside his son David’s home in Washington State, Charles enjoyed woodcarving, collecting classic cars and cruising his motor boat, and worked as a visiting scholar at the University of Washington’s medical school.
He is survived by his sons, Charles, an architect, and David, a physician, and by his brother, David snr.
Charles Christopher Creagh O’Morchoe: born May 7th, 1931; died April 18th, 2011