Leslie Klenerman obituary

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/aug/12/leslie-klenerman-obituary

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My father, Leslie Klenerman, who has died aged 86, was a talented surgeon, teacher, scholar and athlete, whose work influenced many people in the field of orthopaedics.

Born in Johannesburg, to Aaron and Fanny Klenerman, he was part of a vibrant community of migrants from Latvia and Lithuania who had established themselves in South Africa earlier in the century. Both his father and his aunt, Pauline Klenerman, were doctors who had themselves trained in the UK before returning to South Africa to practise, while his other aunt, Fanny Klenerman, established the leftwing (and, later, anti-apartheid) Vanguard bookshop in Johannesburg in the 1930s.

Leslie trained in medicine at the University of Witwatersrand, where he was influenced by the teachings of the anthropologist Raymond Dart, and ultimately became a lecturer in Dart’s department of anatomy. It was on one of the visits to the caves where Dart was uncovering evidence of early hominins, that Leslie met Naomi Sacks, a fellow Wits student. They married in 1954.

The pair moved to the UK the following year, where Leslie began his specialisation to become an orthopaedic surgeon. Following training at Oswestry and in London, he obtained his first consultant job in Tottenham in 1967, where among other duties he looked after the great Spurs team of that era.

When the new Northwick Park hospital and associated clinical research centre were built near Harrow in 1970, he seized the opportunity to move and develop his research career. He remained in London until 1987, when he took up the chair in orthopaedics in Liverpool.

Throughout his career he had a particular interest in the foot and ankle. He wrote an early influential book on the subject and became president of both the UK and European foot surgery societies. Leslie was founder editor of the major European journal for the speciality and his efforts united and encouraged many in this field from around the world.

Leslie was a dedicated swimmer. He won national championships in South Africa at 110 and 220 yards freestyle and just missed out on the team for the 1948 Olympics. In Britain he supported programmes for swimming for disabled people, and continued taking the plunge daily himself, typically around 6am in open water. His last event was the one mile Great North Swim in 2012, where, at 83, he was the oldest competitor.

Following retirement, Leslie and Naomi moved to the Ceiriog valley in North Wales, and then on to Cambridge, where Leslie continued his teaching in the university’s department of anatomy and published his last book, on human anatomy, earlier this year.

Naomi died earlier this year. He is survived by two sons, David and me, and four grandchildren.