Abdul-Razak Al-Adwani served his country, Kuwait, and the Middle East region in a number of high administrative offices. He was minister of public health from 1971 to 1975, chairman of the Kuwaiti Medical Association from 1975 to 1977 and the first editor in chief of the journal of the Kuwait Medical Association. From 1980 to 1984 he was chancellor of Kuwait University.

Born in Kuwait, he was educated in Cairo and went on to England for his medical education. He graduated from St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical School, London, and went on to spend the formative years of his neurological career in the best known centres for neurological disorders, including the National Hospital in London and the Massachusetts General Hospital, USA.

He became a member of the executive council of the World Health Organization and was granted a Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians in London in 1979.

He was not only a respected physician in his discipline of neurology, but was also a scholar with a special interest in Islam and Arabic grammar and culture. He was proficient in German and English, with some French. He reviewed most of the translated works of George Bernard Shaw printed by the Kuwait Ministry of Information.

Saleh Al Deeb

[Saudi Medical Journal, 1997,18,1]