Sir Peter Morris AC FRS FRCS

Director
Centre for Evidence in Transplantation

Sir Peter Morris, an Australian, is Nuffield Professor of Surgery Emeritus at the University of Oxford, he graduated from the Medical School of the University of Melbourne and St Vincent's Hospital, and received his surgical training in Australia, the UK and the USA. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons and the American College of Surgeons. In 1974 he moved from his position as Reader in Surgery at the University of Melbourne to the Nuffield Chair of Surgery and Chairman of Department at the University of Oxford and the Oxford Hospitals and a fellow of Balliol College, positions he held until the end of 2001. In 2001 he was elected as President of The Royal College of Surgeons of England, demitting office in 2004. He serves as a trustee of several Foundations and is Chairman of the British Heart Foundation, the Medical Protection Society and several Scientific Advisory Boards. Since 2005 he has been Director of the Centre for Evidence in Transplantation, and an Honorary Professor within the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine of the University of London.

His clinical interests have been in transplantation and vascular surgery, and, after going to Oxford, he established major units in transplantation and vascular surgery. His professional scientific career has revolved around transplantation and transplantation biology, especially in the immune response to histocompatibility antigens and its suppression. His many contributions include the first description of cytotoxic antibodies in man after renal transplantation and the definition of autoantibodies in potential recipients of transplants, the induction of tolerance to allografts in experimental models, and the role of matching for HLA in renal transplantation. In addition, in the earlier part of his career he made many contributions to the knowledge of the association between HLA and disease, as well as playing a major part in early anthropological studies of HLA around the Pacific Rim. His current interests are devoted to improving the quality of evidence available in clinical organ transplantation.

He is a former President of The Transplantation Society, the British Transplantation Society, the International Surgical Society and the European Surgical Association. He has received a number of prizes for his work including the Lister Medal, the Hunterian Medal and the Medawar Prize. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Academy of Medical Sciences in the UK and in the USA he is a foreign member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and a foreign member of the American Philosophical Society.

He has been awarded many Honorary Fellowships including those of the American College of Surgeons, the American Surgical Association, the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, the German Surgical Society, the Japanese Surgical Society and The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Ireland as well as Honorary Doctorates of Science of the University of Hong Kong and Imperial College, London. He has also delivered over 30 eponymous lectures throughout the world and has held visiting professorships in over 50 institutions. He is the Editor of Kidney Transplantation: Principals and Practice, regarded as the authoritative book in the field, and the 6th edition is now published, and also of the widely acclaimed Oxford Textbook of Surgery which is in its 2nd edition. In 1996 he received a Knighthood from the Queen for services to medicine and in 2004 he was made a Companion of the Order of Australia for services to medical science.