It was with great sadness that we learned of the death of Professor Sir Peter Morris last weekend at the age of 88. Peter was a much loved and respected figure in the international transplant community, with a clinical career that encompassed Australia, the US and the UK, eventually settling as the Nuffield Chair of Surgery in Oxford where he established the Oxford transplant programme.

Many of us in the BTS will have fond memories of Peter from his long career and involvement in British surgery and transplantation.  His passion for science and quality research always shone through, and for those of us who had the opportunity to work with him he was a fantastic mentor – always supportive but just as happy to point out areas for improvement and push his trainees that little bit further to achieve their own successes. He remains a role model for any aspiring academic surgeon.

Peter was also an enthusiastic sportsman early in his career, a passion that remained in his later years. His festschrift on retiring from the Nuffield Department of Surgery in 2001 ended with a cricket match, and he was apparently the first president of the Royal College of Surgeons to install Sky Sports in the President’s office and lounge!

It was a pleasure to see Peter, even if only by video link, at the BTS Congress in Belfast receiving his Presidents’ lifetime achievement award. It is testament to him that despite all of the positions of responsibility he has held and the awards he has received over the years, how much it clearly still meant to him.

Family was also important to Peter, and he is survived by his wife Jocelyn and five children, whom our thoughts are with at this time.

Tribute kindly written by Simon Knight, Senior Clinical Research Fellow | Honorary Consultant Transplant Surgeon Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences | Centre for Evidence in Transplantation

Full obituary from Nuffield Department of Surgery can be found here: https://www.nds.ox.ac.uk/news/obituary-professor-sir-peter-j-morris-frs?ref=image

Read more about Sir Peter’s President’s Lifetime Achievement Award and his contribution to transplantation in James Douglas’ History of BTS and Presidents’ biographies and listen to Sir Peter talking about the early days of BTS and transplantation in the BTS 50th Anniversary film, all found here https://staging-d.bts.org.uk/about-bts/fifty-years-of-the-bts/