of the Royal Society who worked as head of cell chemistry at what was then called the Chester Beatty Research Institute. He died in 1967 at the age of 49, when Kirby was 16. He attended Berkhamsted School for Boys with his older and younger brother, where the three also played on the school's rugby team. Surgical career Kirby graduated in medical sciences from St John's College, Cambridge, in 1972 and completed his clinical training at the Middlesex Hospital (later merged with University College), where he was inspired by lead urologist Richard Turner-Warwick. He gained his MB BChir from Cambridge in 1975, with a distinction in surgery, the decisive turning point that led him towards surgery rather than cardiology. His first house job was at the Cheltenham General Hospital, where he worked with surgeon Peter Boreham, who encouraged him to pursue the field of urology and particularly prostate disease. Subsequently, he took up posts at Brighton, Wolverhampton, and Gloucester. His other teachers have included Ken Shuttleworth and Wyndam Lloyd Davies. He passed in the final Fellowship of the Royal Colleges of Surgeons in 1979. Kirby later described how a number of people in the 1970s had not heard of the prostate gland. During this time, he had attended to a number of people with large prostates that blocked urine flow and a number of people with inflammation of the prostate, which caused pain. When he did see someone with prostate cancer, only two basic surgical options were available on offer: removing the testicles or an operation that removed the middle of the prostate, the latter being performed to improve the flow of urine. In 1985, Kirby spent five weeks at the Duke University Medical Center, North Carolina, USA, on a Royal College of Surgeons travelling scholarship. Earlier, as a research fellow at the Middlesex, he met Clare Fowler and together they published research articles on how nerves work to control the muscles used to control passing urine, work that formed the basis of both Fowler's future contributions to continence issues in people with neurological conditions, and Kirby's doctoral thesis. In 1986 they published their findings that disproved the then widely held belief that retention of urine in some women was psychological or hysterical. The condition came to be known as Fowler's syndrome and has been found to be potentially treatable. In the same year he gained his MD from Cambridge,