From the start it was clear that Dr Dow was cut out for the academic life. By the age of 14 she was Dux of her school. She graduated from the University of St Andrews in 1923 with an Arts degree, and then trained as a teacher. In 1925 she returned to her parents’ home in Anstruther and there met Dr David Rutherford Dow who had just been appointed to the Cox Chair of Anatomy in what was then University College, Dundee and a constituent college of the University of St Andrews. Professor Dow encouraged Agnes to return to University to study medicine. She graduated in 1934 and, after house jobs in Dundee Royal Infirmary, was appointed Medical Officer to the Dunfermline College of Physical Education where she stayed for many years. In 1942 Agnes and David Dow married. It was only to a chosen few in her later years and with a twinkle in her eye that she told the story of why it had taken Davie Dow so long to get round to this: an order from the Air Ministry did the trick.

For the rest of the War, Dr Dow continued caring for her ‘Dunf girls’ but simultaneously began lecturing in anatomy at St Andrews. When Professor Dow became Master of Queen’s College, Dundee in 1954, she took on a new role, taking a special interest in the welfare of the students and supported their musical and sporting societies. Her husband retired in 1958, but as one of its first acts in 1968 the neophyte University of Dundee recognised Dr Dow’s long and generous service to the University community by conferring an honorary degree on her.

After her husband died, Dr Dow continued to take an interest in the University’s affairs. Somehow she always knew all the current gossip and secret alliances. Even in her late 80s she was discreetly advising the best political approach to bring off a particular outcome. One of her last public engagements in the University was to attend the annual Dinner of the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry in 1988 on the arm of Principal Hamlin, but not before tactfully suggesting that the Dow Public Lecture which her husband had endowed 30-odd years previously should be resurrected! In 1988 she also endowed the David Rutherford Dow Visiting Fellowship in Anatomy and an undergraduate prize in anatomy to commemorate the centenary of her husband’s birth.

Dr Dow was a remarkable and warm, affectionate lady. It is fitting that she will long continue to be remembered in the University, not least through the many gifts and benefactions she and her husband have generously given us.
Return to Index