After completing house appointments at St. Bartholomew's and Lord Mayor Treloar Cripples' Hospital, in Hampshire, he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps,[2] serving with the Eighth Army in North Africa and Italy.[3] Subsequently he was appointed General Duties Officer at the Military Hospital (head injuries), Oxford, under Colonel Hugh Cairns and Group Captain Symonds.[2]
After World War II, he returned to St. Bartholomew's Hospital with Sir James Paterson Ross and Mr. J.E.A. O'Connell.
Later career
In 1950, he moved to Edinburgh and was appointed Consultant Neurosurgeon in the Department of Surgical Neurology. Additionally he was appointed Director of the Department and Senior Lecturer in Surgical Neurology at the University of Edinburgh. In 1962, he was named Reader and, in 1963, succeeded Professor Norman Dott as Professor of Surgical Neurology, University of Edinburgh.
Gillingham was considered a pioneer in the field of stereotactic surgery and was widely credited with introducing the concept of subspecialty fellowships to British neurosurgical training.[7]
In January 1982 Gillingham was made a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire,[9] three years previously he had also received the Clark Foundation Award for Services to Road Safety after campaigning for seatbelts to become mandatory in every car.[2]
Retirement
Gillingham retired in 1985 and lived in Edinburgh until 2005, after which he moved to Prebendal, Shipton-under-Wychwood. He died aged 93 on Sunday, 3 January 2010. His son, Dr Jeremy J Gillingham, was killed in a skiing accident in France in 1994.[1][2]
^Pereira, Erlick; Green, Alexander L.; Nandi, Dipankar; Aziz, Tipu Z. (September 2008). "Stereotactic neurosurgery in then United Kingdom: The hundred years from Horsley to Hariz". Neurosurgery. 63 (3): 594–607. doi:10.1227/01.NEU.0000316854.29571.40. PMID18812971.