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Alexander Russell, emeritus professor of paediatrics and childcare Hebrew University of Jerusalem (b Newcastle upon Tyne 1914; q Durham 1936), died from heart failure resulting from ischaemic heart disease on 4 March 2003.

Professor Alex Russell had three outstanding strands to his career and a single one of them could have marked him as a distinguished contributor to the science and practice of medicine. He was house physician to Professor Sir James Spence, from whom he acquired the hallmarks of rigour in scientific research and care of the sick child by supporting the family. During his war service in the Royal Air Force he defined the syndrome of carbon monoxide poisoning in the gun cockpits at the rear of Whitley bombers, where space was confined. He showed that the poisoning accounted for air sickness that had previously been ascribed to "weakness of moral fibre" in veteran gunners. For this discovery and his field research in malaria and hepatitis he was mentioned twice in dispatches and was awarded the OBE.

In 1950 he became assistant to Professor Sir Alan Moncrieff, working at both the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Hackney Road, where he founded the UK’s first paediatric endocrine, growth, and metabolic unit in 1951. He was appointed consultant paediatrician at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children in 1954 and during the next 12 years published first descriptions of many metabolic and neurodegenerative diseases. Several of these syndromes are known throughout the world as the Russell syndromes. Alex was the first to describe an inborn enzymatic defect of the urea cycle (hyperammonaemia), which led to descriptions of patients with defects in every step of the cycle. His scientific research did not prevent him from listening to the parents of children with many disabilities and his welcoming smile, gentle voice, and polite manner helped them in their darkest hours.

His appointment to the chair of paediatrics and childcare at the Hadassah-Hebrew University of Jerusalem gave Professor Russell opportunities to continue his previous work as well as influence the provision of heath care to whole populations. He founded and became director of the Jerusalem Community Centre for Child and Family Development and the Children’s Hospital in Ramallah. His extensive clinical experience is reflected in his monumental books The Cerebral Palsy Entities and The Peto System. He continued to write original articles—the last in 2001 on the 4q-syndrome—and to advise colleagues throughout the world long after his official retirement.

He leaves his wife, Haya;two daughters; and sixgrandchildren. [Bernard Valman]