Obituary: Emeritus Prof Hugh Dudley, Surgeon who set up world-class medical school

Professor Hugh Dudley was a surgeon of global renown with an expertise honed, during war and peace, in hospitals from Aberdeen to Australia.

Ineligible for conscription due to his Irish birth, he did not see active service in the Second World War and later, "shamed by my lack of participation", renounced his Irish citizenship and spent 18 months in the Royal Army Medical Corps.

Educated in Yorkshire at Heath Grammar School, Halifax, he was 17 when he went to Edinburgh University in 1942 to study medicine. Although not subject to conscription, he was recruited into the naval division but, convinced he was not making much of a contribution, he joined the Observer Corps.

Already singled out by his peers as a future surgeon, he graduated the day before marrying Jean Johnston in 1947 and, despite a warning from distinguished surgeon Sir James Learmonth of "knife before wife'" he successfully combined both roles.

He was a member of the RAMC Rhine Army between 1948 and 1950 and worked at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and as a house in Royal Edinburgh Hospital for Sick Children while undertaking further academic study, including as a research fellow at Harvard University.

Elected to the Royal College of Surgeons in 1951, he was a lecturer in surgery at Edinburgh University between 1954-58, graduating ChM from the institution with both the Gold Medal for surgery and the Chiene Medal in 1958.

In that same year he was invited to help Prof James Robson set up an acute renal failure unit in Edinburgh. It paved the way for the first successful kidney transplant in the UK.

His ambition then saw the father-of-three move the whole family to Aberdeen, where he took up the post of senior lecturer based at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. Five years later they were on the move again - this time to Melbourne, Australia, where he became Foundation Professor of surgery at the fledgling Monash University.

He quickly established the medical school at the Alfred Hospital and expanded it to provide departments of surgery and medicine.

The new medical school building was opened in 1968 and he and his fellow professors brought together a new medical course and established a world-class school of medicine, known today for its excellence in areas including the treatment of burns and liver disease.

In the late 1960s the Vietnam War was also being bitterly fought and he joined a volunteer civilian surgical team to provide help treating the civilian sick and wounded.

Decorated by the South Vietnam government for removing a live shell detonator cap from the abdomen of a wounded civilian, he later wrote matter-of-factly about his experiences there in an article for Edinburgh Medicine.

Going into war first-class, on Pan American flights to Saigon, was poor preparation, he said, for the squalor and "Goyaesque horrors" of the civilian injuries which he treated with the highest standards of professionalism and compassion.

However, he recalled that there was no significant danger, "apart from being caught in the spotlight of a helicopter fire team while coming back from an operation in the middle of the night or when the helicopter that took us to the leprosarium in contested territory set down with a thud in a minefield after losing a rotor."

The story of the Australian civilian medical teams has been told in a 2009 book, With Healing Hands, that detailed one incident in which Prof Dudley took exception to an American soldier's indecent proposal.

Certain American troops helped out the medical teams, allegedly in the hope of return favours from the nursing staff. When one turned up one evening announcing "I've got the drugs, you've got the girls, let's do a swap" he found himself on the receiving end of Dudley's wrath. Roaring in rage, he took the American by the scruff of his neck and the seat of his pants and threw him out down the stairs.

"My father was a man of principle and not to be trifled with on matters of honour or manners," says his son Nigel.

By the early 1970s his work in Australia - where he is remembered as a determinedly questioning individual, impatient of pretension, keenly analytical and incisively dismissive of hollow or self-serving argument - was largely done. He had made an enormous contribution to the country's sphere of surgery, become president of the Surgical Research Society of Australia and played a part in introducing the new primary fellowship of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons.

He returned to the UK to take up the position of professor of surgery at St Mary's Hospital, London, in 1973, and remained there until 1988. That same year he was awarded a CBE for his services to surgery and medical education.

He was also president of the Surgical Research Society of Great Britain and Ireland and of the Biological Engineering Society of Great Britain and chairman of the British Journal of Surgery Society and of its editorial committee.

Throughout his career he was a prolific writer of articles and books on surgery. He edited and contributed to the classic UK textbook, Operative Surgery, and was associate editor of the British Medical Journal.

In his retirement he contributed to defence through work as chairman of the Independent Ethics Committee, Army Personnel Research Establishment, Farnborough and the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment, Porton Down.

During his time in Australia he had developed a great love of the country, particularly the harsh environment of the bush, but he also maintained an unwavering love of Scotland and its countryside.

Early in their married life he and his wife had enjoyed walking on Iona and at Appin. Latterly he spent a great deal of time in his retirement walking in the Highlands. He lived at Glenbuchat, in Strathdon, and then at Glass, near Huntly. He listed his recreations in Who's Who as: missing pheasants, annoying others, surgical history.

Pre-deceased by his son Raymond, he is survived by his wife Jean, children Nigel and Iona, eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.