User:Gaius Cornelius/David Pyke

David Pyke (1921 – 2001) was a physician who became a noted expert on diabetes. He served as Honorary Secretary to the Association of Physicians of Great Britain and Ireland 1968-73; as Physician-in-charge, Diabetic Department at King's College Hospital, London 1971-86; as Honorary Secretary, Royal Society of Medicine 1972-74; and as Registrar, Royal College of Physicians of London 1975-92. In 1986 he received a CBE.

In 1948 he married Janet Stewart (one son, two daughters); he died London 12 January 2001.

Early life

Pyke's mother was Margaret Pyke (née Chubb) who would later be a pioneer in birth control and his father was the quixotic Geoffrey Pyke who had become famous as a spy in Germany during the World War I - where he was caught, but later escaped back to England. Geoffrey Pyke would go on to found the highly experimental Malting House School and work for Louis Mountbatten during World War II, he is perhaps best known for his association with Project Habakkuk, a plan to construct huge ships from a composite of ice and wood pulp known a pykrete.

Educated at Clare College, Cambridge, and University College Hospital, London, he qualified in medicine in 1945, and held junior appointments in London and Oxford. In 1959 he was appointed to the staff of King's College Hospital, London, where from 1971 until his retirement in 1986 he was head of the Diabetic Department. Pyke wore four hats: physician, clinical researcher, administrator and communicator. To each he brought panache and an effortless mastery which disguised a ruthless attention to detail and a dislike of the opaque.

In David Pyke British medicine found its Boswell. Blessed with an expansive humanity, a sharp wit and outstanding clinical skills, Pyke added a sure political touch that made him one of the most powerful figures in the Royal College of Physicians during the last century.

The Diabetes Department at King's was already renowned when Pyke took the helm and it did not falter under his careful hand. If medicine is pari passu a conservative art, nothing gave him a greater thrill than the search for truth, "the hunt of ideas", encompassed in medical research. A chance comment led to a unique collection of identical twins with diabetes so that by 2000 the study included over 500 pairs, by far the largest in the world.

Grasping the potential of such twin studies, Pyke established the greater contribution of genes in causing adult-onset, type 2 diabetes, as compared with type 1 diabetes which usually presents in children. When a 40-year prospective study of the twins confirmed his initial observation he was shocked: "Good God, you don't mean to say I've being telling the truth all these years?"

In 1975 he was elected Registrar at the Royal College of Physicians, retiring "in anticipation of public demand" in 1992. As an ex officio member of nearly every college committee, he had the opportunity to direct proceedings along a determined course, and he did so with his customary zeal. Enamoured of ritual and convention, but disliking pomposity and dissembling sycophants, he brought direction to these corridors of power.

In observing the foibles of his fellow man he unleashed a remarkable column, "Registrar's Column", in the college records in which no one was spared, least of all himself. It became compulsory reading for all Fellows of the college and was eventually published as Pyke's Notes (1992).

David Pyke's natural habitat was the stage, where he was able to transmit his exuberance through stories, aphorisms and laws. Pyke's Law of Therapeutic Momentum, for example, states that all treatment tends to be continued. His passion for life extended to golf, cricket and opera, in no particular order, and with no particular talent in any of them.

In the last year of his life he published, with Jean Medawar, a highly acclaimed book, Hitler's Gift (2000), in which the moving story of those outstanding scientists who fled Germany, some of whom had been helped by his father, was documented.