Jim Dempster

Following Cherry's death in 2005, Dempster was looked after by his daughter, Soula, who lived nearby. He died on 27 July 2008.

Dempster retired to his home in Twickenham and dedicated his remaining time to painting and gardening. He had a particular interest in the work of John Hunter and promoted the cause of evolutionary theorist Patrick Matthew of whom he published a biography in 1983. Matthew's life had parallels with that of Charles Darwin, and wrote about natural selection almost 30 years before Darwin did in his 1859, On the Origin of Species.

In 1960 with Ralph Shackman, he carried out some of the earliest kidney transplants in the UK.

In 1956, Dempster joined Charles Rob’s surgical team at St Mary’s Hospital, in performing a renal transplant on a person with acute renal failure. Typically frank and forthright, he described the procedure as an unnecessary tragedy, although it did create an interest in transplantation at St Mary’s Hospital.

In 1946, looking for work, he met Sheila Sherlock again, who was working at the Hammersmith Hospital. At her suggestion, he applied and was accepted to Ian Aird's surgical unit at the Postgraduate Hospital, Hammersmith, as a researcher in organ transplantation, investigating the outcome of dog kidney allografts.

Following his father's sudden premature death soon after August 1919, his mother took the family back to Edinburgh where Dempster then entered George Heriot's School and where he was active in rugby and cricket.

William James Dempster (15 March 1918 – 27 July 2008) was a Mozambican-born British surgeon and researcher in organ transplantation at St Mary’s Hospital, London. He published more than 100 scientific reviews and papers on kidney transplant rejection in dogs, confirming that rejection was an example of immune response, mediated by serum antibodies.

Dempster was born on the island of Ibo, Portuguese Mozambique, to Jessie and James Dempster, who raised cattle in Portuguese East Africa until the tsetse fly caused the business to collapse. His birth was registered on 28 April 1918 and his birth certificate was issued on 9 August of the same year. However, his real date of birth was 15 March 1918. He survived malaria in early childhood.