Jean Ginsburg

Clinician and researcher who pioneered new areas of women's health

In 1971 a friend of mine was referred to Jean Ginsburg for possible thyroid disease. She came away with a diagnosis of probable anxiety. The experience might have been embarrassing but wasn't because, typically, Jean Ginsburg took every patient seriously and did her best for them. She was equally interested in patients whose diabetes, infertility, or thyroid disorders had been misdiagnosed as neurosis. She helped patients with complex problems, such as hirsute women, or people of indeterminate gender.

Dr Ginsburg was a polymath. One of a small group of postwar women doctors with a serious interest in women's health, she was a founder member of the British Fertility Society and an active member of the Endocrine Society. In the 1960s her work on female subfertility put her at the forefront of gonadotrophin use, now crucial to in vitro fertilisation. She was also a clinical physiologist and an expert on the circulation, …