Sir Raymond Hoffenberg, universally known as Bill, was President of the Royal College of Physicians from 1983 to 1989 and attempted to reform the standards of the medical profession from within. He sought a wider participation in medical audit, greater awareness of medical fraud and misconduct, and more stringent relations between physicians and pharmaceutical companies, coupled with more rigorous standards of publication. The use of volunteers and patients in research was also addressed.

Hoffenberg was opposed to defensive medicine, reinvigorated the debate on “no fault” insurance, and sought better government funding of preventive medicine. He had fraught relations with Margaret Thatcher, spoke up strongly for reform of the NHS, and brought about increasing regionalisation of the educational activities of the royal college.

Hoffenberg’s main research achievements concerned the functioning of the thyroid gland and when he left Birmingham University in 1985 he left behind a group of researchers internationally recognised for its excellence. He developed a double radioimmunoassay for the presence of thyroglobulin which is still widely adopted in many countries; this test was of crucial importance in determining whether or not patients had a recurrence of thyroid cancer.

Hoffenberg was born in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, in 1923. He went to the University of Cape Town (UCT) medical school in 1939, enlisted as a stretcher-bearer at the end of 1941 and served in North Africa and Italy in the 6th South African Armoured Division.

He returned to UCT and at the end of 1948 graduated in the second place in his class, and enjoyed a convivial life-style, excelling in tennis, squash and golf. The following year he married Margaret Rosenberg, a social worker. Hoffenberg gained his membership of the Royal College of Physicians and after futher study in the US returned to the UCT (MD 1957, PhD 1968) to become a senior lecturer in medicine.

In 1953 he joined the Liberal Party of South Africa, which opposed racist policies and the abrogation of human rights under the National Party Government, and in 1963 he mounted a campaign against solitary confinement. The Hoffenbergs’ home became one of the intellectual centres of Cape Town where writers and visiting journalists could meet leading black figures. He became chair of the Defence and Aid Fund, which financed the defence of people accused of political crimes. It was banned in 1966.

The following year Hoffenberg was himself banned. This extrajudicial punishment was imposed on hundreds of opponents of apartheid and restricted the victim to a town or region and barred him or her from associating with more than one person. Hoffenberg had an international reputation in endocrinology, and there were large-scale protests. However, a senior UCT staff member would later recall that Hoffenberg received very little support from the South African medical profession and that some of the country’s medical bodies were irreparably damaged and divided by this.

The banning order made it almost impossible for Hoffenberg to continue working in South Africa, and in 1968 he accepted a post under the National Medical Health and Research Council at Mill Hill, North London. Some 2,000 people, mostly students, gathered at Cape Town airport and sang the civil rights song We Shall Overcome as the Hoffenbergs left the country. He would return nearly 24 years later, in the death throes of apartheid and the run-up to Nelson Mandela’s multiracial Government.

From 1972 to 1985 he was the William Withering Professor of Medicine at Birmingham and emphasised the exposure of students to clinical experience and its attendant problem-solving, and the development of a good base in hard science. He was able to bring an additional four hospitals into clinical teaching.

Hoffenberg was President of Wolfson College, 1985-93. This, the largest postgraduate college in Oxford, prospered under his leadership.

His convictions about justice and his compassion led him to be an early carer for the victims of torture and for refugee academics. He was president of the Medical Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons which in 1992 evolved into the charity Medact, of which he was a vice-president until his death.

He was much concerned with end-of-life issues; in 1967 before protocols were well developed, he was the physician at Groote Schuur Hospital who approved the readiness of the donor for the second heart transplant by Christiaan Bar-nard. Hoffenberg promulgated the death of the brainstem as the criterion for mortality, and believed that physicians had a duty to ensure the wishes of patients regarding their demise were fulfilled with minimum suffering. For many years he took part in debates directed to increasing the supply of organs for transplant; his belief in the supremacy of the needs of the patient put him at odds with religious fundamentalists.

Hoffenberg held senior positions in a number of charities where his organisational flair was directed to community health, the needs of people with physical disabilities and greater investment in preventive medicine.

In 1993 he moved to Australia to take up the post of Professor of Medical Ethics at the University of Queensland for two years. This period coincided with South Africa’s first fully democratic election, and Hoffenberg frequently returned to the country, optimistic about the evolution of a racially integrated society.

Hoffenberg was tall with a large, strong physique and a graceful stride. His physical energy enabled him to enjoy many forms of recreation, and also gave him the strength that led to the achievement of intellectual and philosophical goals. He was charming, approachable and a good listener.

He frequently had letters published in The Times on a variety of medical issues, with some drawing the anger of the Thatcher Government because of his criticism of NHS funding. He was given six honorary doctorates and seven fellowships of learned societies and was appointed KBE in 1984.

Hoffenberg was gifted physically and intellectually and applied his talents tenaciously as scientist and physician, humanist and academic.

His first wife, Margaret, died in 2005. He is survived by his second wife, Madeleine, whom he married in December 2006, and by two sons.

Sir Raymond Hoffenberg, KBE, President of the Royal College of Physicians, 1983-89, was born on March 6, 1923. He died on April 22, 2007, aged 84