Professor Denis Baron
PROFESSOR OF chemical pathology at a record-breakingly early age, Dr Denis Baron channelled his love of science into his work at the pathology department of London’s Royal Free Hospital, which he headed for 27 years.
He was the oldest of three sons of Orthodox immigrants from Poland who lived in Tottenham, His father, a family doctor, sent his children to University College School which, unusually for an independent school, had no Jewish quota. Denis was a brilliant pupil, coming second in the whole country in chemistry at matriculation at the age of 18.
At his father’s persuasion he studied medicine rather than pure science -another brother also became a doctor as did one of his daughters. The exigencies of the Second World War cut down his course at the (now closed) Middlesex Hospital to four years.the medical school was evacuated to Leeds, where he lived with relatives and served in the Home Guard. He spent his national service from 1946-49 as a flight lieutenant in the RAF medical corps.
Specialising in pathology on the grounds that patients would not interfere with his research, he started his career at Middlesex Hospital Medical School as senior lecturer in 1951 and moved to the Royal Free Hospital, then near King’s Cross, in 1954. He spent his subsequent career there, with a break in 1960-61 for a prestigious Rockefeller fellowship at Chicago University, where he took his young family.
In 1963 he was appointed professor of chemical pathology at 38 -- then the youngest medical professor in the country. He gained a D.SC in 1966, edited professional journals as well as publishing numerous articles, and serving on boards and committees. He was vice-president of the Royal College of Pathologists from 1972-75 and vicedean of the Royal Free Hospital Medical School at its new site in Hampstead from 1977-79.
Passionate about medical education, he helped set up medical schools in West Africa, Malaysia and Pakistan, involved in designing the syllabus, assessing textbooks, examining students and maintaining standards. He was a university examiner for higher degrees at home and abroad, and a visiting professor and consultant at overseas universities.
Retiring in 1988, he gained an MA in medical law and ethics two years later, and became an expert witness in court cases. Living in London’s Hampstead Garden Suburb for 60 years, he was active in its residents’ association and governor of the local Henrietta Barnett School for girls. His wide range of interests included opera and art, gardening and writing letters to The Times.
For many years he wrote letters to the JC with his league tables of most popular childrens’ names, assessed from the paper’s birth columns. He loved words and persuaded the Oxford English Dictionary to incorporate his invented word, sunlighting (analagous to moonlighting but doing the extra job while supposedly at one’s main job), used in medical journals.
Always accessible, with a vast fund of knowledge, including important trivia such as cartoon strip characters and pop stars, he proved a virtual encyclopedia for his children and grandchildren. He was a natural host and easy conversationalist.
He is survived by his wife Yvonne, née Stern, whom he married in 1951; daughters Leonora, Jessica and Olivia, son Justin; 10 grandchildren and a great-grandson.
THE LEADING Orthodox cantor and survivor of several Nazi concentration camps, Herschel Walfish has died following a lengthy illness. For more than 55 years Walfish inspired, sang and taught at Congregation Beth Israel, the oldest Orthodox synagogue in Los Angeles. His melodic tenor voice, compared by admirers to that of Luciano Pavarotti, drew worshippers from across the city.
When hotel magnate Severyn Ashkenazy was asked to describe his old friend in one sentence, he fell back on the terminology of the old country.
“Cantor Walfish was a shtetl Yid,” Ashkenazy said. “He had all the Yiddishkeit and Menschlichkeit we had in the old Polish shtetl.” ( Menschlichkeit denotes integrity, character, humanity and much more).
Walfish was born in a Polish shtetl near Krakow to a family that included Belzer and Bobov chassidim. As a teenager he was arrested by the Nazis and spent five years in various concentration camps. He credited his survival, partly to his singing for the camp commanders.
After a post-war period in a displaced