Professor Donald Brook Cheek - Medicine, 1984

Donald Brook Cheek was born on 12 April 1924 in North Adelaide. As a student at Prince Alfred College Donald developed a passion for science. He became interested in biology and physiology, and studied medicine at the University of Adelaide (MB, BS, 1947; MD, 1953).

Resident medical officer in 1947-50 at Royal Adelaide and Adelaide Children’s hospitals.

Awarded a Rotary International medical and scientific fellowship, Cheek travelled to the United States of America in 1951 to work under Dr Daniel Darrow, an authority on water and electrolyte metabolism at Yale University, Connecticut. 

In 1953-56 Cheek was on the staff of the Children’s Hospital Research Foundation, University of Cincinnati, Ohio. 

Returning to Australia, in 1959-62 he was senior research fellow and consultant at Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne, where he pursued his work on water and electrolyte metabolism.

Cheek was back in the USA in 1962-73, at Johns Hopkins University’s school of medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, as head of a unit studying growth disorders in children. 

In 1973 Cheek became director of the Royal Children’s Hospital Research Foundation, Melbourne, and professor of paediatrics, University of Melbourne.

Resigning in 1980 because of ill health, he returned to the University of Adelaide as visiting professor in obstetrics and gynaecology and continued his work on foetal development. 

He retired from the University in 1988.

He died of cancer on 6 March 1990 in Adelaide and was cremated. His unpublished autobiography, `Writing the Music’ (1989), is held by the University of Adelaide library.

Taken from Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 17, (MUP), 2007