The Raine Medical Research Foundation represents the largest bequest received by The University of Western Australia for medical research. It has supported major research projects, fellowships and scholarships, and participated in major joint ventures.
Mary Raine (nee Carter) was born in London in 1877, the eldest of 13 children. She migrated to Australia at the age of 23 and settled in Perth. Determined to succeed from an early age, she invested and built considerable property assets in Perth, notably the Wentworth Hotel, located at what is known today as Raine Square. Mary and her second husband, grazier and philanthropist Arnold ‘Joe’ Yeldham Raine became business partners. Upon his death in 1957, the Mary donated their financial legacy to the University of Western Australia and the Yeldham and Mary Raine Foundation was born with the premise to initially research the causes of arteriosclerosis, the disease that had caused her husband’s death. When Mary Raine died in 1960, she left the majority of her estate to The Raine Foundation (now Raine Medical Research Foundation). In total she bequeathed the foundation nearly $1 million, a considerable sum in those days.
In the late 1980s, the foundation agreed to support the visionary Raine Study (or the West Australian Pregnancy Cohort Study as it was formerly known), to develop a long term cohort to study the role that early life events (from the womb onwards) had on later life. The study is now multi-generational.
