[1] He was a medical microbiologist with an interest in bacteriology, authority on the history of medicine, avid collector, writer, lecturer, world traveller, and occasional radio and TV broadcaster.

As a working-class boy growing up in England in the 1930s, and during World War II, it was a great achievement for him to win a scholarship to be educated at the prestigious and ancient Leeds Grammar School.

He then went on to study at the University of Edinburgh from which he graduated with a BSc, MB ChB, and gained an MD presenting the thesis ' Infection and environmental contamination in a general hospital and in a dermatology department'.

In 1967 he became one of the youngest-ever visiting professors for the World Health Organization (WHO) at Baroda University in India, as well as a WHO SE Asia medical consultant.

He toured India extensively, visiting not only towns and cities but also many remote rural areas as part of his WHO project to greatly improve the standards of health and hygiene at various hospitals.

[13] One of his most accessible and delightful publications (in collaboration with his predecessor Professor R W Lacey and research assistant and colleague Mohammed Bakhtiar) was "The beta-lactam antibiotics: penicillins and cephalosporins in perspective.

He suggested that clean water and small amounts of simple soap were ample and that most of the available cosmetics and personal hygiene products being advertised were not just unnecessary but also potentially harmful especially through habitual over use.

Whilst barely in his 50s Professor Selwyn was diagnosed as suffering from "multiple system atrophy" (MSA), and told he might have only around 5–9 years left to live.

[18] Eventually, as his condition worsened he lost his ability to speak,[1] but, again undaunted, he learned to communicate by typing a single letter at a time on his lightwriter which had a built-in voice synthesiser.

Receiving this prize, which is usually presented at the John Locke Lecture,[19] is an impressive achievement as the standard and quality of candidates entering the examination is generally very high.