Lloyd Nyhus was the first Warren Cole professor and head of surgery, and the second academic surgeon, at the University of Illinois, Chicago. During his 22 years as head of the department, Nyhus developed innovative, multidisciplinary residency programmes for more than 300 doctors and recruited top-

Dr John Lawrence Bignell, a leading ophthalmologist in Melbourne for many years, died on Monday 31 October 2005 after a long illness. John was born in Melbourne on 24 May 1917, the second son of Colonel and Mrs F Bignell; his father was also a doctor and served in France in the First World War. J

Robert Bruce Salter, known as 'Bob', a sixth generation Canadian, was a pioneer in orthopaedic surgery in children. He was born in Stratford, Ontario, on 15 December 1924 and graduated from the University of Toronto. He then worked for two years at the Grenfell Medical Mission in Newfoundland, and s

Colonel David C Wherry was a professor of surgery at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS), Bethesda, Maryland. He was born on 18 December 1926, in Pawnee City, Nebraska, the son of Kenneth Spicer Wherry and Marjorie Wherry née Colwell. His father was an important politica

Claude Organ was a distinguished American surgeon and the second African-American President of the American College of Surgeons. He was born in 1927 in Marshall, Texas, and educated at Terrell High School, Denison, and then Xavier University, Louisiana. Denied acceptance to the University of Texas o

Born in Paris on 23 February 1883, the son of Pierre Bazy (1853-1934), a leading urologist who was a member of the Académie de Médecine from 1913 and the Académie des Sciences from 1921, Louis Bazy studied at the Faculté de Médecine of Paris, graduated in 1910, and was promoted to consultant rank in

Jim Thompson was an outstanding surgical scientist and educator, arguably without parallel in the latter half of the 20th century. His publications, almost all relating to gastrointestinal physiology, totalled nearly 1,000; he trained 131 research fellows and was the recipient of 265 visiting profes

Derek Berg was born in 1926 in Hong Kong, where his father was a shipping broker and Norwegian Consul-General. His Australian mother Constance died of cerebral malaria just before his third birthday, and Derek was sent to live with his aunt in Adelaide. His father remarried and he returned to Hong K

William George Dismore Upjohn was born in Narrabri, New South Wales, Australia, on 16 March 1888. His mother Jane Mackenzie was the daughter of a cabinet maker and his father, George Dismore Upjohn, was a jeweller. He studied at Wesley College, Melbourne, and at the University of Melbourne where he

Ralph Ger was a clinical anatomist and innovative surgeon, who spent most of his working life in New York at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He emigrated from South Africa during the period of apartheid, and obtained much of his surgical training in the United Kingdom after war service in t

Sir Robert Shields enjoyed a distinguished career in surgery and in academic and health service administration. He was professor of surgery and chairman of the department of surgery and honorary consultant to the Royal Liverpool University and Broadgreen hospitals from 1969 to 1996. His unit was int

Eoin O’Malley was a cardiac surgeon and a past president of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. He was born on 5 April 1919 in Galway, where his father was professor of surgery. From Clongowes Wood College he went to medical school, at first in Galway and later at University College, Dublin, w