Michael Woodruff - Early Life

Early Life

Michael Woodruff was born on 3 April 1911 in Mill Hill, London, England. In 1913, his father, Harold Woodruff, a professor of veterinary medicine at the Royal Veterinary College in London, moved the family to Australia so he could take up the post of Professor of Veterinary Pathology and Director of the Veterinary Institute at the University of Melbourne. The elder Woodruff later became the Professor of Bacteriology. The family's new life in Australia was interrupted by World War I, which prompted Harold to enlist in the armed services. He became an officer in the Australian Army Veterinary Corps and was sent to Egypt.

The remainder of the Woodruffs returned to London, and the two boys lived with their mother and paternal grandmother in the latter's residence in Finchley. However, Michael and his brother went back to Australia in 1917 after their mother, Margaret, died of a staphylococcal septicaemia. The two then spent a short time under the care of an aunt before being rejoined by their father in 1917.

In 1919, Harold remarried and his new wife raised the children from his first marriage. The two boys did their early schooling at Trinity Grammar School in Melbourne. From then on he spent all of his youth in Australia except for a year in Europe in 1924 when his father went on sabbatical leave at Paris's Pasteur Institute. During this time, Woodruff and his brother boarded at Queen's College in Taunton, Somerset on the south coast of England. The headmaster at the school derogatorily regarded Australians as "colonials" who were "backward" and put Woodruff in a year level one year lower than appropriate. Upon returning to Australia, Woodruff attended the private Methodist Wesley College, where he enjoyed mathematics and rowing.

He won a government scholarship to the University of Melbourne and Queen's College, a university residential college. Woodruff studied electrical engineering and mathematics, receiving some instruction from the influential physicist Harrie Massey, then a tutor. Despite success in engineering, Woodruff decided that he would have weak prospects as an engineer in Australia because of the Great Depression. He decided to take up medical studies at the end of his third year of undergraduate study, but his parents wanted him to finish his degree first. Despite his fears regarding his ability to succeed as an engineer, Woodruff placed first in his graduating class with first-class honours. He also completed two years of the maths program with first-class honours.

After graduating in 1933, he entered the medical program at the University of Melbourne. His mentors included Anatomy Professor Frederic Wood Jones. While at the University, he passed the primary exam for the Royal College of Surgeons in 1934, one of only four successful candidates who sat the examination in Melbourne that year. He finished the program in 1937 and received an MBBS with honours as well as two prizes in surgery. After graduation, he studied internal medicine for one more year, and served as a house surgeon at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. Woodruff then started his surgical training.