Maurice Super was a consultant paediatric geneticist at the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital. He was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, the son of Eastern European Jewish parents, Eric Simon Super, a commercial traveller, and Aida Super née Marsden, a receptionist. He was educated at King Edward VII Hospital in Johannesburg and then studied medicine at Witwatersrand University, qualifying in 1959.
He trained in paediatrics at Baragwanath Hospital, Soweto, from 1960 to 1966 and became a consultant paediatrician to the South West African Health Department and to South African Railways and Harbours. For ten years he was the only paediatrician in South West Africa (now Namibia). His interest in cystic fibrosis led to an MD thesis, ‘Cystic fibrosis in South West Africa’, in which he explored the high incidence of the disease among the Afrikaans population.
In 1978 he went to Edinburgh, where he took an MSc in human genetics, focusing on cystic fibrosis and the possibility of detecting carriers of the disease.
He was subsequently appointed as a consultant clinical geneticist at the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital, where he remained until his retirement in 2001. (In 1984 his title was changed to consultant paediatric geneticist.) At Manchester he established the department of clinical genetics, developed a large paediatric clinical genetic practice and pioneered district clinics throughout the northwest.
He wrote extensively on cystic fibrosis, including Cystic fibrosis: the facts (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1987).
Outside medicine, he was a keen birdwatcher and concert-goer. He played bridge, tennis and cricket, and was chairman of Salford District Hospitals Cricket Club.
In 1958 he married Anna Monica Jakob, an optometrist. They had two sons (Michael and Jon), a daughter (Beth) and five grandchildren.
RCP editor
[BSHG Newsletter – The Newsletter of the British Society of Human Genetics Issue 35, Feb 07, p.5; The Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh www.rcpe.ac.uk/obituary/dr-maurice-super-frcp-edin – accessed 9 February 2014; The Guardian 13 November 2006]