The name of a pioneering doctor who dedicated his career to improving lives of elderly people in Wolverhampton is being added to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Dr Joseph Harold Sheldon published a ground-breaking piece of research on the medicine of old age in 1948.

Now it has been announced his name is one of the latest to be added to the book containing information on the lives of tens of thousands of notable historic figures.

The late Dr Sheldon published The Social Medicine of Old Age, which was regarded as a ground-breaking piece of academic research upon its release.

Dr Sheldon, a former director of medicine at the then town’s Royal Hospital, did the research in Wolverhampton after taking up a post in the city in 1921 and soon got a reputation across the West Midlands for his acute clinical observation.

In 1935 he published a major study of haemochromatosis – an excess of iron in the body – but his major interest was the health of older people.

He held his outpatient sessions on Wolverhampton market days so that patients could visit him more easily.

Dr Sheldon published important studies of age and ageing and its relation to health needs and was internationally recognised as president of the International Association of Gerontology in 1954.

In 1961 the doctor produced an important review of services for the elderly in the Birmingham regional hospital area, pointing to unsatisfactory facilities which were available.

As a result new purpose-built units were introduced. It was said Sheldon turned down many offers of medical professorships in order to concentrate his energies on Wolverhampton.

Dr Sheldon, who died in 1972, will join 102 other distinguished figures in the pages of the national publication.

Other city residents to have made it into the book include wartime artist Alfred Leete and gas mask inventor Edward Harrison.

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography can be viewed by logging on to www.oxforddnb.com