Jim Dempster
William James Dempster (15 March 1918 – 27 July 2008) was a British surgeon and researcher who helped lay the foundations of organ transplantation in the UK. Based at St Mary’s Hospital, London, he published more than 100 papers on kidney transplant rejection in dogs and showed that rejection is an immune reaction driven by serum antibodies.
Born on the island of Ibo in what is now Mozambique, he moved to Edinburgh with his family after his father died. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and later joined the Royal Air Force, serving in India and Burma during World War II.
After the war he joined Ian Aird’s surgical unit at the Postgraduate Hospital, Hammersmith, to study organ transplantation. He also worked at Buckston Browne Farm with Sir Arthur Keith. In six years he wrote more than 100 articles and helped show that the body’s immune system causes graft rejection.
His work connected him with other transplantation pioneers and helped develop ideas about how to suppress immune responses, including the concept of graft-versus-host and the idea that whole-body irradiation could reduce immune reactions. In 1956 he joined Charles Rob’s team at St Mary’s Hospital and helped perform one of the UK’s early kidney transplants; in 1960 he and Ralph Shackman carried out more early kidney transplants in Britain.
After retiring, he lived in Twickenham, enjoyed painting and gardening, and wrote a biography of Patrick Matthew, an evolutionary thinker who wrote about natural selection before Darwin. His wife Cherry died in 2005; their daughter Soula cared for him in his later years. He passed away on 27 July 2008 at the age of 90.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 10:57 (CET).