Sir Roy Calne, FRS

Professor Emeritus of Surgery at University of Cambridge

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Professor Emeritus of Surgery, University of Cambridge

Calne was born in Richmond, Surrey, educated at Lancing College and had his medical training at Guys Hospital in London, where as a student he asked if one of his young patients, suffering from kidney disease, might have a kidney graft to save his life, but he was told that this could not be done. Nevertheless in 1959 after qualifying and working at a number of London hospitals he had a chance to return to this subject at the Royal Free Hospital and the Royal College of Surgeons, where he started to work on the technique of kidney grafting and the obstacle of rejection. Preventing organ graft rejection has been his main interest. With early encouraging results in London he received a Harkness Fellowship to continue his studies at Harvard Medical School. He was the first to use drugs to control the rejection of donated organs and this led to an enormous expansion of organ grafting worldwide. He was the first to develop and use Azathioprine, Cyclosporine, Rapamycin and Campath in organ transplantation.

In 1965 as Professor of Surgery in Cambridge he started a kidney transplant programme in Cambridge and he performed the first liver transplantation operation in Europe in 1968. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1974 and knighted in 1986. He received a number of academic awards and honorary degrees and in 2012, together with Dr Thomas Starzl, he was awarded the Lasker DeBakey medical research award for the development of liver transplantation. He received the Pride of Britain award for Life Time Achievement in 2014. Currently he is Visiting Professor at the National University of Singapore involved in collaborative research with University College London and Cambridge Medical School on the experimental development of gene therapy for treatment of diabetes.

Calne is a keen artist and his paintings have been exhibited in many different countries and have helped raise awareness of organ donation, depicting his transplant patients, medical and scientific colleagues.

He has written a number of books on general surgery, organ transplantation, art and surgery and recently has published a book “The Ratchet of Science or Curiosity Killed the Cat”, which outlines the extraordinary progression of science in the last fifty years for good and for potentially destructive applications. This unstoppable surge in science raises concerns that with little evidence of a change for the better of human nature, there are serious dangers of the misuse of destructive weapons by a few unhinged terrorists or a terrible accident. Scientists may have no ideas where their research may lead but they do have a responsibility to attempt to channel applications aimed towards peace, to live and let live.

  • 14 April 2015, 10am

    CSaP Annual Conference 2015

    This year our conference will explore opportunities for improving the way government accesses, assesses and makes use of expertise from the humanities, and offer examples of the significant contribution these disciplines have made to public policy.