Jennifer Kernahan

Jennifer Kernahan (née Hardy) was born in Sunderland and qualified with honours at Durham, having won numerous student prizes. She chose a career in paediatrics. After house jobs at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle she went to Bristol for two years of general medicine and then on to Great Ormond Street, where she first encountered children with leukaemia. She returned to Newcastle as senior registrar and worked with Willie Walker, treating children with leukaemia. As part of the married women’s retainer scheme she spent 11 years as senior registrar before being appointed consultant in 1981. She contributed enormously to the dramatic rise in survival rates from leukaemia across the UK. Loved by children and parents and hugely supportive of nurses and trainee doctors, she was an exceptional and caring doctor. She married Russell in 1970, and he predeceased her. She leaves two sons and eight grandchildren