Rex Brinkworth MBE (25 July 1929 – 29 October 1998) was the founder of the UK Down's Syndrome Association. He was a pioneer of early treatment for babies with Down syndrome through stimulation and diet. He collaborated on this with Jerome Lejeune, the French geneticist who discovered that Down syndrome is caused by an extra chromosome 21. He was also a campaigner for integrated mainstream education for children with Down syndrome, and against the use of term 'mongolism' to refer to the syndrome. By coincidence, later he and his wife themselves had a child with Down syndrome. Biography Brinkworth was born on 25 July 1929 in Eastington, Stonehouse, Gloucestershire. When a small child he became friendly with two adults in the village who had Down syndrome, which influenced his later work. Brinkworth trained as a teacher, his first teaching posts being at a Grammar School in Gloucestershire, a Catholic Secondary School in Birmingham and Turners Green Secondary School for Boys in Birmingham. At the latter he specialised in remedial teaching for students with learning difficulties. He was then appointed as Head of the Remedial Department of Great Barr Comprehensive School in Birmingham. There he developed a theory that many of the problems of pupils with learning difficulties were caused by their inadequate stimulation in infancy. Career In 1959 Brinkworth read of the finding by Lejeune that Down syndrome was the result of an extra chromosome At the time, there was much speculation about the relative influence of heredity or environment on children's performance. Brinkworth tested the relative effects of these factors by giving environmental stimulation to very young children with Down syndrome, to see if their performance could be improved and the consequences of their genetic condition counteracted. Brinkworth was already fluent in French, and he had met and married a French woman, Jackie. He contacted Lejeune and began a fruitful collaboration with the French doctor in research into the treatment of children with Down syndrome through environmental means – diet and stimulation. By great coincidence, in 1965 Brinkworth and Jackie had a child, whom they named Francoise, born with Down syndrome. Brinkworth then enrolled for a Diploma in Child Psychology course at the University of Birmingham, for which he carried out a controlled experiment. Five babies with Down syndrome were visited for four hours each week for six months, with the parents being given detailed instructions for stimulation and