Maurice King: physician and author of textbooks for doctors working in the developing world and researcher on population control

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Maurice King said he was not ambitious to be a professor or head of department, rather he wanted “to make the world turn better.” He understood his efforts might not be received in the spirit they were made, however, quoting Molière’s maxim, “It is a madness like no other to want to interfere in correcting the world.”

King spent much of his career in the developing world, trying to improve medical care for the poor.

When working at Makerere College, Kampala, Uganda, he offered to do a holiday locum in a remote mission hospital. There he realised the complete absence of literature for care in this setting and set about filling the gap. In 1966 he published Medical Care in Developing Countries, a “primer on the medicine of poverty,” he wrote. It made a huge impact and went on to sell 50 000 copies and set King off on his career as a “knowledge engineer,” as he described himself.

In 1967 he became professor of social medicine at the new medical school in the newly independent Zambia. He also worked in Indonesia and Kenya.

Jim Thornton, emeritus professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Nottingham University, …