Dame Bridget Ogilvie, 1938-2026

Described by Wellcome as “a bold, inspiring, supportive leader, with a vision for long-term science who never shied from a challenge”, Dame Bridget was instrumental in the events that led her organisation to donate £10 million towards the cost of the Wellcome Trust Building (WTB) at Dundee. At the time, this was the largest single donation ever given to a Scottish institution.

Dame Bridget performed the WTB’s official opening ceremony in 1998. This was followed by a special honorary degree ceremony for the scientists, philanthropists and academics – including Dame Bridget – who had made a significant contribution to the establishment of the building. She returned regularly to Dundee over the years to attend the Bridget Ogilvie Lecture, which was founded in her name to acknowledge the contribution she made to the development of life sciences at the University. 

Professor Sir Philip Cohen paid tribute to Dame Bridget and the role she played in helping to establish what former Principal Professor Ian Graham-Bryce called Dundee’s “sparkling citadel of science”

“I first met Bridget in November 1990 when she gave the keynote lecture at the first annual ‘retreat’ of the Biochemistry Department at Dundee,” said professor Sir Philip. “At that time, Bridget was Director of Science Programmes at the Wellcome Trust, but soon afterwards she was promoted to Directorship of the Trust. 

“Impressed by the quality of the science she had heard at the retreat, Bridget then invited me to apply for the funding needed to construct a building that would solve Biochemistry’s space problems and enable it to expand ‘modestly’. That led to the donation in late 1994 that permitted construction of the Wellcome Trust Building. 

“This infrastructural support allowed us to recruit scientists from around the globe to create a Life Sciences hub at the University of Dundee. Without Bridget’s support at a critical moment in its development, Life Sciences in Dundee would never have reached its current stature.” 

Born in Australia, Dame Bridget was a renowned parasitologist, dedicated supporter of pioneering research and champion for the public’s understanding of science. As Director, she oversaw the diversification of the Trust’s investments through the sale of the Wellcome drug company to Glaxo for £8.9 billion in 1995. 

This bold move led to Wellcome becoming the second largest medical charity in the world, with current assets in excess of £36 billion and an annual spend of about £1.9 billion for biomedical research.  Dame Bridget also used some of these assets to establish the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Hinxton, which played a pivotal role in sequencing the human genome (and many other genomes) and, in doing so, kept genomic data in the public domain enabling its worldwide use to facilitate our understanding of human health and disease.