Finn Bøe--war, medicine, music.

Abstract

In January 1944 the Norwegian Resistance Movement placed a radio transmitter in the attic of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, the National Hospital (Rikshospitalet), Oslo. Knut Haugland (1917-2009) used this to send messages to the Norwegian government-in-exile in London. The transmitter was discovered by the Gestapo, and German troops surrounded the building on 1 April 1944. Haugland survived a dramatic escape. While the transmitter was in operation, Haugland lived with senior registrar Finn Bøe (1906-70) and his family in a hospital apartment. Bøe risked his own life and that of his family to assist during a dramatic phase of the resistance struggle. Bøe had completed a focused and purposeful clinical and academic training when he was appointed senior registrar at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, the National Hospital, in 1943. He was professionally ambitious. His thesis from 1938 was disqualified, but four years later he submitted a new, experimental thesis which he successfully defended in 1945. In 1955, Bøe became the first senior consultant at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Aker hospital. Under his leadership, it became the largest in the Oslo area, and one of the most active in Norway with regard to science. Several of Bøe's own academic works on placental morphology and blood circulation have become classics. Outside of medicine, his great interest was music, and not only as a piano player. He also wrote a book about his fellow townsman Edvard Grieg.