John Lennard-Jones

John Edward Lennard-Jones was a pioneering gastroenterologist and an exceptional man in many ways. Known affectionately to his colleagues as “LJ,” he was a caring and astute physician, a gentle but inspirational teacher, and a prodigious clinical researcher. Colleagues recall that no one who worked with him ever had a bad word to say about him.

John was born in 1927 in Bristol into an academic environment; his father, Sir John Edward Lennard-Jones, was professor of theoretical physics. When John was 5, his father was appointed professor of theoretical chemistry at Cambridge, and the family moved. During John’s childhood his main interest was the natural world and this resulted in him undertaking a natural sciences tripos at Cambridge. After the war he was called up to do national service but was posted to the burns unit in Birmingham. While there he wrote two papers, one on the value of penicillin in finger pulp infections and the second on the importance of sensation in distinguishing partial thickness burns from full thickness burns. This entailed inflicting burns on himself, using different exposure to a 1 kg heated brass weight! His experiences there changed his life plan completely, and he decided to study medicine, returning to Cambridge.

He completed his clinical undergraduate training at University College Hospital, winning all the undergraduate prizes and going on to do professorial house jobs with …