Chris Silagy

One of the leading lights of evidence based medicine dies aged 41

The night before his final admission to hospital, Professor Chris Silagy hosted a Christmas dinner at his home for more than 30 of his staff. That day, he had made a presentation to them about his vision for the future of the Monash Institute of Health Services Research in Melbourne, Australia, which he headed.

It was typical of Silagy, one of the leading lights of the Cochrane Collaboration, that he continued working until the last possible moment, despite feeling terribly unwell. Silagy, 41, died on 13 December. He had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma more than four years ago.

His communication skills, affability, enthusiasm, energy, vision, courage, and hard work are widely lauded as having been crucial for the progress of evidence based medicine.

Silagy became involved in evidence based medicine as the Sir Robert Menzies scholar in medicine at Oxford University's department of public health in the early 1990s, where he met Iain Chalmers, …