As a fifth-year student at Edinburgh Medical School during his training in respiratory diseases at the City Hospital, Anthony Barrington Kay, known as Barry, was moved by the startling speed with which a young woman with asthma lost her fight to live. At his mother’s request he had taken the path to becoming a doctor, yet his natural inclination was more scientific and he spent a lifetime researching allergy and immunology, in particular the role of eosinophils and T cells in the allergic response in bronchial asthma.
A legendary figure and a world-class authority, he was head of allergy and clinical immunology at the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London and head of the allergy clinic at the Royal Brompton Hospital. In