Zohra and Abdullah Siddiqui Scholarship
Abdullah Siddiqui was born in September 1933 in Jamnagar, also known as Nawanagar
(which means new or cleaned up city), in Gujarat, India, the foruth of 13 children. His grandparents were farmers with minimal academic education. His father must have been a smart kid; a hardworking scholar who learned multiple languages including Persian and Arabic, received scholarships, went to college to study law and ultimately became a judge. Abdullah went to Karachi, Pakistan for his pre-med and medical education, achieving top marks in all his exams. Pathology was his favourite class.
In 1962, Abdullah moved to New York and began a series of residencies working within several hospitals associated with NYU including the physical medicine and rehab department, internal medicine and nephrology. He then moved to Saskatoon for a cardio renal residency working with the kidney transplant team. He then received a fellowship from the National Research Council through University of Toronto, working in the clinical investigation unit of Toronto General Hospital and the Banting Institute. During his fellowship, he passed the Canadian and American specialty exams in Internal Medicine and earned an F.R.C.P.(C) and a diploma from the American Board of Internal Medicine.
Abdullah's next stop was Victoria, working in the field of dialysis services and later in the opening of the kidney transplant clinic at Royal Jubilee Hospital. He was also a clinical director of nephrology service for several years and then retired in 1997. Post-retirement he did locums for a couple of years and worked gratis in a charitable clinic during winter holidays in his home town of Jamnagar, India. Abdullah found the field of neurosciences to be quite challenging and rewarding and hopes this award will serve as a token contribution from his family to support related disciplines.