Born: 
13/12/1922
Died: 
31/10/2010
Specialty: 
General/Internal Medicine
Designatory Letters: 
MB BS Sydney 1945, MRCP Edin 1953, FRCP Edin 1969

(Contributed by David Boyd)

Born in New South Wales in 1922, Reg Walker died on 31st October 2010. He graduated MB ChB at the University of Sydney in 1945 and as an undergraduate he represented Wesley College in both cricket and tennis. He later became a Fellow of this College and Chairman of its council. After junior hospital posts in Australia he came to the United Kingdom with the object of obtaining the Edinburgh membership which he did in 1953 . He became a Fellow of the College in 1969 and maintained contact with it, attending its overseas meetings including the first in Hong Kong in 1985.

He was in private practice in Sydney but had appointments as medical specialist at the Sydney Hospital and others and taught clinical medicine at the University of New South Wales while a member of the Faculty of Medicine. His main clinical interest was diabetes and he was a founder member of the Australian Diabetes Society and a member of the Endocrine Society of Australia.

Reg was a committed Christian and was a lay preacher in the Methodist Church from his graduation and was a representative of the Australian Church to world assemblies in Sweden and Kenya. This strand of his life also took him for a year as consultant and acting professor of medicine at the Christian Medical College in Vellore, India in the 1970s.

The other great interest in his life was music. He was an accomplished pianist (becoming an Associate of the London College of Music in 1939), organist and carillonist and was carillonist to Sydney University. He performed, by invitation, on carillons all over the world. One of his favourite tales was of playing in the ancient town of Bruges in Belgium and incorporating into his repertoire the tune of ‘Waltzing Matilda’ thereby attracting a surprised and delighted audience of Australian tourists.

He was a devoted family man. He is survived by his wife and five children (one of whom is a psychiatrist in New South Wales) and fifteen grandchildren (one of whom is a medical student in Sydney University).