Along with a range of teaching and research interests, he wrote several surgical textbooks, and played a leading role in university and medical administration.

Born in West Yorkshire, he served as a fighter pilot in the First World War before resuming medical studies in Edinburgh.

Over the next 25 years, he established the Glasgow School of surgery, with generations of his students influencing surgical research and teaching in Britain and abroad.

Illingworth travelled and lectured widely, and helped initiate and present a 1963 television series on postgraduate medical training.

[1] Illingworth saw action in France in 1918, which ended when he was shot down (forced landing) in August over the Somme and held as a prisoner-of-war at Ingolstadt, Bavaria, Germany.

[2] He then continued with further training in his chosen speciality of surgery, studying and working from 1922 in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh with Harold Stiles and David Wilkie.

He in turn was replaced by Bruce Dick, also of the University of Edinburgh, who came on a fellowship of the International Health Board of the Rockefeller Foundation and stayed eight months.

[2] In the three years before the outbreak of the Second World War, Illingworth held the position of Conservator of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (1936–1939).

[5][9] It was in 1939, with the country facing the upheaval and uncertainties of the Second World War, that Illingworth moved from Edinburgh to take up the role of Regius Professor of Surgery, Glasgow.

[11] According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: "Under Illingworth's leadership, the Glasgow school achieved worldwide renown for excellence in the practice and teaching of medicine and surgery, and also in research".

[12] He was also awarded lectureships and travelled abroad during this period, such as when he delivered the 1958 Strauss Lecture under the title 'The Endocrine Aspects of Breast Cancer'.

In 1961, he gave the Legg Memorial Lecture at King's College Hospital Medical School on 17 November under the title 'Treatment of Arterial Occlusion under Oxygen at Two-atmospheres Pressure'.

There were twelve episodes in the series (titled 'Post-Graduate Medicine'), broadcast monthly from 11 March 1963: "for hospital doctors and general practitioners and [...] in the nature of a post-graduate class".

[22] As well as practising, teaching and administrating as Glasgow's Regius Professor of Surgery, Illingworth also held positions within the hierarchies of a range of medical and learned societies, colleges and associations.

[28] The following year, furthering his contributions to administration, Illingworth was one of those organising the Lister Centenary events held in Glasgow from 26 to 29 September 1965; he was also involved in appeals to raise funds during the commemorative period.

This dinner and talk was attended by some 400 guests, including former US Vice-President Richard Nixon, former Governor of New Jersey and president of pharmaceutical company Warner-Lambert Alfred E. Driscoll, and Senator Joseph Lister Hill, with the wife of the latter recalling the event in her memoirs.

[36] As part of the event, Illingworth on behalf of the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, received an oil portrait of Lord Lister, commissioned by Warner-Lambert from US artist Norman Rockwell.

[48] The announcement of the award in the Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England stated that it was for:"...his devotion to surgical science over a long period; and in particular for his contributions to knowledge of jaundice and diseases of the biliary tract, of peptic ulcer, and of the endocrine aspects of the treatment of cancer; and for his perception of the importance of the use of oxygen in treatment under hyperbaric conditions as a field for physiological research.

"[48] Illingworth's Lister Oration was delivered on 9 April 1964 at the Royal College of Surgeons of England in London under the title 'On the Interdependence of Science and the Healing Art'.

[50] A few months later, Illingworth delivered the Lister Lecture of the Canadian Medical Association in Vancouver, Canada, on 24 June 1964, under the title 'Wound Sepsis—From Carbolic Acid to Hyperbaric Oxygen'.

[52] In 1965, Illingworth was invited by the Council of the College of Physicians, Surgeons and Gynaecologists of South Africa to give the 1965 Louis Mirvish Memorial Lecture.

[53][n 9] Illingworth travelled abroad again the following year to receive the Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.

[56] Following his retirement in 1964, Illingworth held the title of Emeritus Professor of Surgery at the University of Glasgow, and continued to carry out locum work into his seventies.

Sir Charles Illingworth's book has done much to make good this deficiency and will, it is hoped, reawaken interest in him, not only as one of the leading gynaecologists of the eighteenth century but also as a pioneer in the promotion of reform and improvement in medical education.

Titled There is a History in All Men's Lives (1988),[n 11] it had been previewed in The Glasgow Herald in December 1987,[70] and was reviewed in the British Medical Journal in April 1988.

Sir Charles's pupils occupied more than 20 chairs of surgery in this country and abroad, and played an important role in shaping the mould of surgical research and teaching.