Miss Helen Elizabeth Anne Farran (B.Sc) succeeded Miss Dorothy Wellington (described here), the first clinical physicist in Australia, at the Melbourne Hospital.

In 1947 Miss Farran was one of the trainers for a one year Radiotherapy course conducted at the Melbourne Technical College. Other trainers included Dr. Kaye Scott and Dr. Cecil Eddy. In “The Radiant Years”, Dr. Kaye Scott mentions that Miss Farran was responsible for determining required radon source distributions, based on dosage distributions she obtained from Manchester, London, Paris and Stockholm; and indicates she had “gone off to England” during the war.

Miss Farran moved to England in 1948 to join Prof. William Mayneord’s department at the Royal Cancer Hospital in London. She retired in 1973, after working in an isotope laboratory at New End Hospital (from 1952) and a radioisotope department at Northwick Park (from 1970). Miss Farran passed away in 1975, at the age of 63, and an obituary was published in the Lancet later that year (vol. 306, num. 7929, pp. 331).