Martin Hynes was a distinguished pathologist. He was born in Hull, the son of Martin, a sheep farmer, and Mary, the daughter of a butcher. He was educated at Beverley Grammar School and went on to study at Cambridge and then Middlesex Hospital. He had house jobs at the latter and from 1938 to 1939 was Eunice Oakes research fellow at the Hospital for Sick Children.

During the Second World War he was in the RAMC where, with the rank of major, he was a specialist in pathology. For three years he was officer in charge of an amnesia investigation.

He was a man of first-rate ability and in 1946 was appointed reader in medicine at the University of Cambridge. Four years later, in 1950, he was appointed pathologist to the Royal Northern Hospital and in 1955 to the King Edward VII Hospital for Officers. His private practice flourished, the excellent service he built up being a forerunner of the modern major private pathology laboratory.

Martin Hynes was a very private man, reserved and apparently aloof. He was noted for his very large Rolls Royce, which seemed to his colleagues to be appropriate. He was married to Jean, and had two sons, Jonathan and Andrew.

Sarah Jane Gillam
Ian McDonald