Leslie N. Pyrah (1899-1995), urologist, surgeon

Leslie Norman Pyrah, Emeritus Professor, had a distinguished career in renal medicine at Leeds University between 1930 and 1964.

Born in Leeds in 1899, he went on to read Medicine at the University, graduating M.B., Ch.B. in 1924, having also obtained Hons. B.Sc. and Masters in Physiology. After qualifying he undertook a number of training posts, including with Berkeley G.A. Moynihan (1856-1936) at the Leeds General Infirmary. He became Surgical Tutor at Leeds University in 1930, and continued to rise through a number of appointments until he was elected to a Personal Chair of Urological Surgery at Leeds University in 1956. This was the first Chair in Urological Surgery in the UK.

The Department of Urology at the Leeds General Infirmary and St James's Hospital had been founded in 1950, with Pyrah as Surgeon-in-Charge. He was later appointed as Honorary Director of the Medical Research Council Unit for the Study of Surgical Metabolism in 1956. He also set up the first renal haemodialysis unit in the UK at the Leeds General Infirmary in 1956, which was run by Dr Frank Maudsley Parsons (1918-1989).

In 1948 he was elected to the council of the British Association of Urological Surgeons (BAUS), and he went on to serve as President between 1961 and 1963. Pyrah was elected to the Council of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1960 and served until 1968, and he was also a co-founder of the Urological Club of Great Britain, established in 1949. He was appointed CBE in 1963.

Pyrah retired from the clinical staff of the Leeds General Infirmary on 11th April 1964, and from his University Chair and directorship of the Medical Research Council Unit later the same year. He died on 30th April 1995, aged 96.