Professor Sir Keith Sykes 1925 - 2019

It is with great sadness that the College reports the death of Honorary Fellow Professor Sir Keith Sykes.

Born in 1925, Keith Sykes was educated at Magdalene College in Cambridge and the University College Hospital, London. He began his professional life with a medical post at the University College and his surgical house job at Norfolk and Norwich.

Becoming a full-time lecturer at the Postgraduate Medical School and Consultant Anaesthetist at Hammersmith Hospital in 1958, he was promoted to Reader in 1967 having published his studies on the effects of anaesthetic drugs on lung perfusion. Between 1970 and 1980, he was Professor of Clinical Anaesthesia at the Royal Post-graduate Medical School and Hammersmith Hospital.

In 1980, he moved to Oxford and became Nuffield Professor of Anaesthetics at Oxford University and a Fellow of Pembroke College.

During his career, Keith gave invaluable contributions in the fields of anaesthesia, intensive care, applied respiratory physiology and clinical measurements. His name is familiar to most anaesthetists through his numerous textbooks and papers on the treatment of respiratory failure, and principles of measurement for anaesthetists.

Upon his retirement in 1991, Keith became a Supernumerary Fellow of the College and was elected as an Honorary Fellow in 1996.

In recognition of his considerable contributions to academic anaesthesia Keith Sykes was knighted in 1991. His academic reputation was also recognised internationally, with Keith receiving Honorary Fellowships from the Colleges of Anaesthesia in Australia and New Zealand in 1979 and South Africa in 1989; as well as Honorary Memberships of several National European Societies of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care, including the Association of Anaesthetists of which he was Vice‐President from 1990 to 1992.

In 2009, he was made an Honorary Member of the History of Anaesthesia Society and was also honoured to receive the Hickman Medal from the Section of Anaesthesia of the Royal Society of Medicine.

Keith had lost his wife in 2016, after 61 years of happy marriage; Lady Michelle Sykes was an Honorary Visiting Fellow of Kellogg College.

He will be very much missed by those who knew him.