Saad Al-Damluji was an endocrinologist at the Royal Free Hospital in London. Born in Baghdad, Iraq, both his parents were distinguished physicians. His father was Salem Farook Al-Damluji [Munk’s Roll, Vol.XI, p.7], a professor of medicine, and his mother, Laman Amin-Zaki [Munk’s Roll, Vol.XII, web] was a professor of paediatrics. Educated at Mansur School in Baghdad and Baghdad College, he then studied medicine at the University of London and the Middlesex Hospital. He qualified in 1977.
After house jobs at the Middlesex, Ipswich, St Bartholomew’s (Bart’s) and the Brompton hospitals, he became registrar at St Mary’s Hospital in 1981. Two years later, he was appointed Medical Research Council training fellow at Bart’s and, in 1986, honorary lecturer. He continued to lecture at Bart’s until 1990, when he went to the US as visiting scientist to the National Institutes of Health at Bethesda, Maryland. Returning to the UK in 1995, he was appointed honorary consultant endocrinologist to the Royal Free Hospital and senior lecturer at the Royal Free and University College Medical School.
He had a high level of commitment to his research and was said to have worked over 15 hours a day for six days a week with virtually no holidays. A colleague said of him that ‘he possessed a unique intensity’ and was ‘a model for any aspiring clinical scientist’. In spite of his untimely death, he produced a large body of publications and patents in general medicine, endocrinology and neuroscience. He was popular with his students (more than 70 of them attended his funeral) and regarded with great affection by his patients.
In 1978, he married a lawyer, Mary Georgina née Keane, and they had two sons, Hassan and Salem. A convivial man, he had little time for pursuits outside medicine. When he died, he was survived by Georgina and his sons.
RCP editor
[Endocrinologist, 2006 81 6]