Allen, Frederick Martin Brice (1898–1972), medical professor, was born 20 June 1898 in Belfast. He studied medicine (1915–20) at QUB, graduating MB (1920) and MD (1923). In 1925 he was appointed assistant to the professor of materia medica in QUB, in 1928 he was promoted to lecturer in materia medica, and in 1932 he became a lecturer in infant hygiene and diseases of children. During this period he was medical registrar in the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast (1925–8), continuing as clinical assistant (1928–39). The first full-time paediatrician in Belfast, he was paediatrician in the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children (1924–63), and physician in charge of infants in the Royal Maternity Hospital, Belfast (1927–63).
A council member of the British Medical Association 1939–42, he was also a surgeon lieutenant-commander in the RNVR, an adviser to the government, and air raid officer for Belfast during the second world war. He helped plan the wartime defence of NI hospitals, as well as the new NI national health service after 1948. In 1948 he was appointed to the newly founded Nuffield Chair of Child Health in QUB, retiring in 1963. He set up a premature baby unit, one of the first in the UK, in the Royal Maternity Hospital, pioneered speech therapy and child guidance clinics in NI, and established a unit dealing with metabolic disorders in mentally retarded children, which became known internationally. He was also a member of the Northern Ireland Hospitals Authority and a founding member of the British Paediatric Association. In 1955–6 he was president of this body, and in the same year was president of the Ulster Medical Society. His Aids to diagnosis and treatment of the diseases of children was very popular with nursing and medical students and went into eleven editions by 1962. He married Anne E. M. Calvert of Lurgan, also a doctor, and died 10 January 1972 in hospital in Belfast.