Around the world as a medical professor
article written by Harriet Veitch
for The Sydney Morning Herald
26 December 2008 at 11.00 am
Over the years Professor Alan Ng, a pathologist specialising in gynaecological cytology, worked in Australia, the United States and Malaysia. It led to some odd cultural crosses, such as his favourite Christmas dinner of lamb, gravy, potatoes and rice, but it allowed him to train new pathologists far and wide.
He was professor of pathology at the University of Sydney and head of the Department of Anatomical Pathology at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital from 1981 until 1998. He wrote or co-wrote more than 180 articles for medical literature as well as textbook chapters, and produced teaching materials that are still in use.
Alan Beh Puan Ng, who has died aged 74, was born in Kuala Lumpur, in 1934, one of nine children of Ng Chin Siu and his wife Lim Boon Tuan, who had migrated there from southern China.
In 1941 Japan invaded and occupied Malaya. The war years were hard because the Ng family owned a rubber plantation and were forced to produce material for the Japanese war effort.
After the war, Alan resumed his education at St John's College in Kuala Lumpur. In 1951, when he was 17 years old, he was sent to Melbourne and enrolled at St Kevin's College, matriculating the following year. He studied medicine at the University of Melbourne, graduated in 1958, when he was 24 years old, and was appointed to St Vincent's Hospital in Melbourne as a resident medical officer. That year he married Enid Charter, a nurse training at the hospital.
After two years at St Vincent's, he became a registrar in pathology there and, after further training in Ohio, became a lecturer in the faculty of medicine at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur. In 1964, when he was 30, he was appointed the first professor, and head, of the new department of pathology at the university.
In 1967 Ng went to Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, as an assistant professor of pathology. He rose to be professor of pathology at Case Western Reserve and stayed there until 1975, when he became professor of pathology at the University of Miami, Florida.
There he continued teaching, researching and attending international conferences, where he presented papers and conducted seminars on cytology (the study of cells). In 1980 he was awarded the George Papanicolaou Gold Medal by the Evoikos Society of New England, for a distinguished physician/scientist in the United States or Canada who embodies the ideals and scientific spirit of Papanicolaou, the inventor of the Pap test.
In 1981 Ng took the chair of pathology at the University of Sydney and became head of the department of Anatomical Pathology at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, where he remained until retiring in 1998. Yet he continued to travel for research and teaching, and accepted a visiting professorship at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.
Ng was a member of many societies and academies of pathology and cytology around the world. He was at various times president of the American Society of Cytology and the Australian Society of Cytology, and a fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia. He was an examiner in pathology for universities in Malaysia, Singapore and Papua New Guinea and an assessor for research grants from the Cancer Council of Australia.
During his time in the US, Ng had taken citizenship there but some years after returning to Australia he was proud to become an Australian citizen. He was recently recognised by the Australian Society of Cytology for his lifetime contribution.
In retirement, Ng remained interested in the work of the Royal Prince Alfred department of pathology. However, he was happy to enjoy retirement and travel for pleasure. He spent time in America and Paris, where Enid put her degree in French to good use, although Ng was proud of his ability to cope well without the slightest knowledge of the language.
He was a frequent visitor to Malaysia, where many of his siblings and their families still live. He took an interest in visual arts and began to collect paintings and sculpture. He loved to tell a joke, but often laughed so hard he couldn't get the punchline out. He loved food and making his special fried rice for the family. He was delighted to be a grandfather.
Alan Ng is survived by Enid, their children Amanda, Kathryn, Timothy and Denis, nine grandchildren and six of his brothers and sisters.
Hi, Sandra,
Look what I found at the SMH's obituary.
They just don't mention the "causa mortis". What was it?
Sandra Winstanley, 31 Mar 2018.
Hi Luiz,
Prof Ng was being treated by haematologist for multiple myeloma for many years so imagine that to be the cause.
