Professor Tyndale John Rendle-Short (1919–2010), British and Australian paediatrician: A life in two domains

Abstract

Professor Tyndale John Rendle-Short (1919–2010), a British and Australian paediatrician, lived a professional life of considerable influence in two domains – academic paediatrics and fundamentalist theology. A Cambridge medical graduate (1943) and doctor-soldier, he was appointed as the Foundation Professor of Child Health at the University of Queensland (1961). In Australia, he was a pioneer in three paediatric developments (‘rooming-in’ for mothers in hospitals, autism research and cystic fibrosis). His A Synopsis of Children’s Diseases was published in six editions, was translated into three languages and was used as a standard paediatric textbook on four Continents. Distinct from this clinical domain, as a passionate anti-Darwinist his fundamentalist theology was that variously self-described as ‘theistic evolution’ (believing in ‘progressive Creationism’) and later that of ‘six-literal day young-earth Creation’. He established and was the Foundation Chairman of the Creation Science Foundation (UK) and was World Chairman of the US-based Creation Ministries International. This biography is a record of this perhaps paradoxical and unique life.