Charles Rob

Charles Granville Rob MC FRCS (4 May 1913 – 26 July 2001) was a British surgeon who pioneered techniques in the repair of damaged blood vessels, particularly the operation to unblock arteries of the neck, known as carotid endarterectomy and of the aorta when treating aortic aneurysms.

After graduating from Cambridge University and St Thomas' Hospital Medical School, Rob operated throughout the Blitz and in the Tunisian Campaign, where he received the Military Cross.

After the Second World War, Rob became the youngest chief of surgery at St. Mary's Hospital, London and he also lead the vascular surgery program at St Mary's Hospital, London where he carried out one of the world's first carotid endarterectomies and a year later performed the UK's first deceased donor human-to-human kidney transplant.

[2] The Robs traced their ancestry from Loch Lomond, Scotland where they owned a successful cattle droving business, which continued after they settled in Yorkshire in the 1680s.

[2][3] and his mother was a descendant of Edward "Grog" Vernon, the British Admiral who introduced diluted rum for Royal Navy sailors in the 18th century.

After receiving a reserve commission as a pilot in the Royal Air Force he transferred to St Thomas's Hospital for his clinical attachment.

[2] Here, he met Mary Dorothy Elaine Beazley, who had worked as secretary and secret courier to Royal Air Force officer William Wedgwood Benn, and had subsequently enrolled in the Florence Nightingale School.

He suffered a left tibia and kneecap fracture when a bomb fell, and was reported to have used his own blood to transfuse a wounded person.

[14] The recipient had developed acute renal failure following a septic abortion and was considered by Dempster as not ideal for transplant[15] and an unnecessary fatal disaster.

[16][17] In 1960[2] Rob accepted the position of chief of the Department of Surgery at the University of Rochester, Strong Memorial Hospital and moved to the United States.