David Richard Bromham

David Bromham wanted to be a marine biologist but his mother persuaded him otherwise. In 1972, weeks after the birth of his first son, he graduated twice, in medicine and PhD, with a thesis on the nervous system of the octopus. After junior posts he became a lecturer in Bristol, retaining his deep voiced London accent. There he coauthored landmark papers on infertility and was recruited to family planning by one of its pioneers, Elizabeth Gregson. Moving to Leeds in 1982, he started the infertility service at St James's Hospital, and made several appearances in the television series Jimmy's, delivering the first set of quads to be born in front of a television camera. In 1991 he became chairman of the National Association of Family Planning Doctors, guiding it through its dissolution and rebirth as a faculty of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, becoming its first chairman and dying in office.

David felt strongly about women's health and their “fifth freedom” from the tyranny of unwanted fertility. He spoke all over the world and appeared frequently in the media giving well informed responses to contraceptive scares. He came under fire many times figuratively–and once literally, when …