This biography was compiled from family records and external sources by Dawn Elder, Rennae Taylor and Daniel Beaumont. Many thanks to the family of Ruth Mitchell for their contributions.
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1949 graduate
University and mountaineering
Ruth Mitchell (née Adams) was born in 1925 and was the elder daughter of Ernest and Jean Adams. She was educated at St Margaret’s College in Christchurch and entered the 1944 class at Otago Medical School with just 10 other women. She completed a Batchelor of Medical Science in the Department of Anatomy in 1946 before returning to fourth year medicine. (1) Her thesis involved a microscopic analysis of the connections in the midbrain of the tuatara. She was athletic and interested in a number of sports, representing the University of Otago in skiing, hockey, and tennis, but her true passion was mountain climbing.
On 6 February 1948, Ruth, Edmund Hillary and two guides, Mick Sullivan and Harry Ayres, achieved the first ascent of Aoraki Mt Cook by the South Ridge, a difficult and dangerous climb. The ridge was subsequently named the Hillary Ridge in his honour. A few days after their ascent, the same party were attempting to climb Mt La Perouse when Ruth had a serious accident whilst crossing an ice fall. She plunged 20 metres down the ice and was left unconscious with arm and facial injuries and what turned out to be a fractured lumbar spine. (3) She was protected in a snow cave by Edmund Hillary until the two guides could organise the rescue. The subsequent complicated and dangerous rescue from over 3,000 metres took 6 days and was the highest rescue carried out in New Zealand prior to the use of helicopters. It is justly remembered for the difficulty of the rescue and the bravery of the teams involved. Ruth required a number of operations but eventually made a good recovery. Her left arm, however, remained a problem. As a dominant left-hander she had to learn to write with her right hand. She subsequently said that she could never forget the “scream of the crampons as they cut through the ice”. (4)
Early career overseas
Despite a very disrupted year she distinguished herself in her final examinations and completed her sixth year of training in Christchurch, graduating in 1949. (5) After graduation, she was offered a house surgeon position at Dunedin Hospital. In 1950, she married fellow house surgeon Robert Mitchel, whom she had met during her medical science degree. In 1952 they travelled to England where Ruth completed a Diploma of Child Health at Great Ormond Street Hospital. (6) Following this, she obtained a post at the children’s hospital in Nottingham, although she felt that as a career it might not be compatible with the role she wanted to have as a mother, particularly given the emergency and night work. After working in Cambridge, the couple returned to New Zealand in 1954, and she became a lecturer in Anatomy at the Medical School in Dunedin.
In 1959 the family with two young daughters moved to Australia and Ruth was appointed Lecturer in Anatomy at the University of Queensland. It was here that she developed her interest in the electron microscope, studying skin pigmentation and the melanocyte. In 1963, now with three children, the family travelled to the USA as her husband was awarded a Carnegie Fellowship to study renal transplantation. Ruth was awarded a fellowship and lectureship at Harvard University in the Dermatology Department at Massachusetts General Hospital where she continued her studies of melanocytes.
Medical doctorate and final years
The family returned to Queensland in 1965, where Ruth continued her research in pigmentation and commenced a study on the effects of sun damage in Queensland. The family moved to Hobart in 1967, where Ruth completed her Medical Doctorate. Awarded in 1968, the title was “The effect of prolonged solar irradiation on the human skin”. She was appointed Lecturer in the Pathology department of the University of Tasmania and when the family moved to Sydney in 1977 she was appointed senior lecturer in Pathology at the University of New South Wales and specialist Pathologist at St George Hospital. Here she continued with general pathology and electron microscopy. She retired in 1989 and died in 1990. She leaves a record of 17 publications.
Her husband, Robert, wrote in 2006:
“she remained a talented and keen photographer all her life, a skill very important in electron microscopy and became an excellent water colour painter and a jewellery maker… Ruth was a wonderful mother to her three children… she made outstanding contributions and published widely in medical journals both in Australia and overseas.” (3)
Ruth Mitchell was an excellent clinician and researcher. Although she spent most of her working life overseas she will forever be associated with two New Zealand icons, her father baker Ernest Adams and her mountain climbing colleague Edmund Hillary, conqueror of Everest. Ruth had to climb her own Everest to overcome the serious injuries she sustained while still a medical student. The fact that she did so and forged a successful research and clinical career while balancing family life shows her tenacity and determination.
Bibliography
- “Degrees Conferred”, Evening Star, issue 26039, 1 March 1947, p. 6. Papers past.
- Pater Calder, “Sir Edmund Hillary’s Life” The New Zealand Herald, 11 Jan 2008. NZherald.
- Robert Mitchell, personal communication, 29 August 2006. With thanks to Ruth and Robert’s children, Robin Surtees, Christopher Mitchell, and Jenny Holding.
- Robin Surtees, personal communication, 31 March 2025.
- “Page 8 Advertisements Column 6”, Otago Daily Times, issue 27267, 19 December 1949, p. 8. Papers past.
- “Marriage”, Otago Daily Times, issue 27482, 31 August 1950, p. 1. Papers past.
