Angus Graham Bird was a consultant immunologist and former head of the department of immunology at Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford. He was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the son of Angus and Kathleen Bird, both doctors. He was educated at St Peter’s School, York, and St Catherine’s College, Cambridge. He went on to Worcester College, Oxford, before taking a PhD at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

In 1983 he was appointed as a consultant immunologist at Newcastle. During his time there he set up the Immunology Travellers’ Club, an informal group for consultant immunologists, which he chaired.

He went on to Edinburgh, where he set up the HIV immunology unit. He began working with the Scottish Centre for Infection and Environmental Health and the Medical Research Council’s Biostatistics Unit in Cambridge.

He later moved to Oxford, as a consultant immunologist and head of the immunology department at the Radcliffe Hospitals Trust. Before being becoming ill with a brain tumour, he had been appointed to head the immunology department at Leicester.

He was a popular teacher and a gifted diagnostician. In the last year of his life he wrote papers on topics as diverse as drug testing in prisons and the prevalence of coeliac disease in the community. He actively lobbied for better specialist training for trainee doctors and for the improved treatment of prisoners who were drug addicts.

He was interested in music, and loved wine and hill walking. He was a lifelong supporter of the Magpies (Newcastle United). He married twice, firstly to Prudence née Nicol, by whom he had a son, Tom, and secondly to Sheila née Gore.

RCP editor

[The Guardian 26 Jan 2000; Brit.med.J.,,2000,320,1606]