Dennis Snow Ridley

Dennis Snow Ridley will be best remembered for his publications with William Jopling in 1962 and 1966 on the classification of leprosy according to immunity. These were followed by a third publication with Michael Waters in 1969 that provided vital prognostic insight to the complexities of the lepromatous end of the leprosy spectrum, where he distinguished a sub-polar group of patients whose potential gradually to regain immunity could lead to years of immune reactions and severe nerve damage.

Although the Ridley-Jopling classification was originally proposed for the purposes of research, it made supreme clinical sense and soon became the sheet-anchor of leprologists the world over and the basis for all clinical …