Catherine Provan Pike

Catherine Provan Pike was one of three daughters of Edward Cathcart, a distinguished professor of physiology at Glasgow University, and Gertrude Bostock, an early science graduate. She was educated at Laurel Bank School for Girls, and all the daughters graduated in medicine in Glasgow, where Catherine was president of the students’ union. After qualifying she served in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) at RAF Fighter Command Uxbridge.

She was demobilised in 1947 and worked at Winchester General Hospital, where she met her future, husband Andrew Hamilton Pike, a provincial commissioner in Tanganyika. They had been introduced by her cousin, Maurice Dorman, who was her husband’s deputy at the time. While in Tanzania, Catherine helped establish a family planning organisation and raised a family of four boys. On her …