Born on 15 May 1873 at Elizabeth, New Jersey, son of Edward Lawrence Keyes (1843-1924) afterwards distinguished as a genito-urinary surgeon in New York, he was educated at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York, graduating in 1895. Keyes practised as a urological surgeon and rose to the highest eminence in his specialty, as his father did before him. In 1904 he was appointed to the staff of Cornell University Medical College, New York City, and taught there till the end of his life, becoming eventually emeritus professor of clinical surgery (urology). During 1903-8 he was professor of urology at the New York Policlinic Medical School and in 1910-11 at the Bellevue Hospital Medical College. He was surgeon to the New York Hospital, and to the Bellevue, Memorial, and St Vincent's Hospitals. During the first world war he was consultant in urology to the United States Army overseas, served in France, and was admitted to the French Legion of Honour as an Officer. He played a leading part in many professional societies, serving as president of the American Urological Association, the International Society of Urology, the Clinical Society of Genito-Urinary Surgeons, the American Association of Genito-Urinary Surgeons, the Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis, and the American Social Hygiene Association, which awarded him its first William Freeman Snow medal in 1935. He was also a vice-president of the New York Academy of Medicine. He was a frequent contributor to the *Journal of Urology*, while his textbooks *Surgical Diseases of the Genito-Urinary Organs*, written with his father in 1903, and *Urology* (1928) were very successful and influential. He was beloved and respected at home and abroad. He married twice: (1) Emma Willard Scudder by whom he had two sons and two daughters; (2) in 1948 Mrs Bessie Potter Vonnoh, sculptor, who survived him. He died in New York on 16 March 1949 aged 75. A portrait-medal of Keyes by P M Danemann was struck when he was president of the International Urological Congress in 1936; the College possesses an example of it, presented by Sir Hugh Lett, Bt, PRCS.