Person

Bowen, Thomas Aubrey (Aubrey) (1837 - 1893)

Born
20 December 1837
Cradley, Worcestershire, United Kingdom
Died
27 July 1893
London, United Kingdom
Occupation
Ophthalmologist and Surgeon

Summary

Aubrey Bowen was one of the earliest ophthalmologists in Melbourne. He came to Australia having qualified in medicine in Ireland. Soon after arrival he was appointed Resident Surgeon at the Melbourne Hospital. In August 1869, with colleague Ewin Jones, he founded the Ophthalmic and Orthopaedic Institute which, in January 1871, amalgamated with the Melbourne Institution for Diseases of the Eye and Ear. Ultimately the Institute became the Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital. Bowen established his practice in Collins St, Melbourne, in 1874, remaining there for 16 years. In his will, Bowen bequeathed £20,000 for division amongst Victorian charitable and benevolent institution. The Aubrey Bowen Wing of the Hospital, funded from the bequest, is the earliest remaining part of the original Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital buildings.

Skip to

Details

Chronology

August 1869
Career event - Established the Ophthalmic and Orthopaedic Institute with Ewin Jones
1874
Career event - Established practice in Collins St, Melbourne
1875
Career position - President, Medical Society of Victoria

Related Corporate Bodies

Published resources

Conference Papers

  • Lowe, R.F., 'Founders of Ophthalmology in Victoria, Australia: A.S. Gray, J.T. Rudall and T. A. Bowen', in History, Heritage and Health: Proceedings of the Fourth Biennial Conference of the Australian Society of the History of Medicine, Norfolk Island, 2-9 July, 1995 edited by Covacevich, Jeanette, Pearn, John, Case, Donna, Chapple, Ian and Phillips, Gael (Brisbane: Society of the History of Medicine, 1996), pp. 373-374.. Details

Journal Articles

  • Anon, 'Obituary: Thomas Aubrey Bowen', Australian medical journal, ns, 14 (1893), 474. Details
  • Bowen, T. A., 'Notes on ophthamlic practice in various English and continental eye hospitals made during a recent visit to Europe', Australian medical journal, 13 (1873), 65-71. Details
  • Bowen, T. A., 'Retiring President's address', Australian medical journal, 21 (1876), 5-13. Details
  • Lowe, R. F., 'Aubrey Bowen, oculist, 1837-93', Australian Journal of Ophthalmology, 9 (1981), 155-62, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1442-9071.1981.tb01504.x. Details
  • Lowe, Ronald F., 'T. Aubrey Bowen, oculist, 1837-93: his charitable bequests in Victoria', Australian and New Zealand journal of surgery, 53 (2) (1983), 183-7, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1445-2197.1983.tb02425.x. Details

Newspaper Articles

  • Anon, 'Death of Mr Aubrey Bowen', The argus (1893), 10. Details

See also

Helen Cohn

Created: 18 November 2025

EOAS ID: biogs/P007918b.htm

This Edition: 2026 February - 1926 Centenaries
Kooyang - Gariwerd calendar - Late summer: late January to late March - season of eels
Reference: https://www.bom.gov.au/resources/indigenous-weather-knowledge/indigenous-seasonal-calendars/gariwerd-calendar#bom-anchor-list__item-kooyang-season-of-eels

Publisher: Swinburne University of Technology.

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
What do we mean by this?

The Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation uses the Online Heritage Resource Manager (OHRM), a relational data curation and web publication system developed by the eScholarship Research Centre and its predecessors at the University of Melbourne 1999-2020. The OHRM has been maintained by Gavan McCarthy since 2020.

Cite this page: https://www.eoas.info/biogs/P007918b.htm

For earlier editions see the Internet Archive at: https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.eoas.info

"... the rengitj, as a visible mark or imprint on the land, is characterised as a place of origin, the repository of all names, as well as a kind of mapped visual expression of the connection between people and places which is to be carried out in the temporal sequence of the journey." Fanca Tamisari (1998) 'Body, Vision and Movement: In the footprints of the ancestors'. Oceania 68(4) p260