Born Hans Emanuel Löwit in Vienna in 1919, he enrolled to study Medicine in Vienna in the winter semester of 1937-38. During his studies, he met Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler, undoubtedly influencing his later career choices. Being Jewish, he was expelled in 1938 and he and his mother were forced to flee to the UK.
After working as a butler and a plumber’s mate, Ian was interned as an enemy alien at Duff House in Banff. Transported to Canada, he re-crossed the Atlantic to join the British Army, fighting in northern Europe after D-Day.
Resuming his medical studies at Aberdeen University in 1948, Ian won the Keith Gold Medal for Surgery. He trained in Edinburgh in child psychiatry and become Aberdeen’s first consultant child psychiatrist in 1960. He established the service for the north east of Scotland and developed it into a modern child and adolescent psychiatric service.
In 1963, he was an expert witness at the trial of Henry Burnett, the last man to be hanged in Scotland. His opinion, that Burnett required treatment rather than punishment, was ignored by the court and rubbished by the press, in a drive to press ahead before the death sentence was repealed.
Shortly before his retirement in 1984, the in-patient unit for child psychiatry was named the Lowit Unit, but in 2014 the ward was closed in a round of funding cuts.
In retirement, Ian volunteered for many years as a counsellor for Mental Health Aberdeen. Always appreciated for his wry wit and gently eccentric manner, Ian died in Aberdeen two months after his 100th birthday.
Obituaries
BMJ: 2019;367:l6351
P&J (23 October 2019)
The Times (22 Nov 2019)
