Leon Abrams was a cardiothoracic surgeon who developed the first variable-rate heart pacemaker. He was born in Leeds, but his family soon moved to Birmingham, where he spent most of his life, apart from a short period of National Service in the Royal Army Medical Corps. After medical school in Birmingham and surgical training, 'Abe', as he was universally known, was appointed to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in the city, as a cardiothoracic surgeon. Here he set up one of the foremost centres for lung and heart surgery in the United Kingdom, and established open-heart surgery in the hospital. He also developed his talent for mechanical devices. He designed a pleural biopsy punch in the 1950s, which is still used for the diagnosis of intrathoracic lesions, and, in 1960, together with Ray Lightwood, an electronic engineer, he developed the variable-rate heart pacemaker, which solved two problems of earlier designs - infection from the wires through the skin and muscle pain from the electrical impulses. These were both solved by 'inductive coupling', so that the pacemaker was outside the body and the heart stimulation came from a small implanted coil. The device was marketed as the 'Lucas-Abrams pacemaker', a small box strapped to a belt outside the body. He also developed an artificial heart valve, although this did not prove to be entirely successful, despite being cheap to manufacture. At the Queen Elizabeth Hospital he specialised in treating newborn babies with congenital heart defects, and often stayed in the hospital through the night to supervise their postoperative care, so vital after this type of surgery. Abe's empathy for his patients made him a reassuring presence in the hospital. He was a founder member of 'Pete's Club', the brain-child of Peter Jones, its founder chairman. The only rule of the club was that no case should be presented which threw credit on the presenter; only errors of judgement were discussed. This meant that members learnt a great deal at these meetings, much more than at other national and international surgical events. Abe was elected chairman of the Medical Executive Committee, the teaching hospitals doctors' association in Birmingham, by his colleagues. He also served on numerous boards, and was an adviser to, among other institutions, the Royal Brompton Hospital in London. He had little time for outside interests, but he was for many years on the council of Singers Hill Synagogue in Birmingham, and also, like his father, chairman of the governors of King David School, a Jewish primary school. He also loved dinghy sailing and later cruising with his family across the channel to Normandy and Brittany. In retirement he had the misfortune to develop three types of cancer - non-Hodgkin lymphoma, bladder cancer and then colonic cancer, all three of which were successfully treated. He also developed polymyalgia and was treated with steroids, which led to a great increase in his weight. He had developed some degree of coronary atheroma, for which a stent had been inserted. He died in his sleep on 14 December 2012, at the age of 89. He was survived by Eva, his wife of 60 years, and three sons.