us to writers like Graham Greene and André Gide. In retrospect, I suppose the opera stuff was a bit risqué – Don Giovanni, Tosca, La Traviata – but the voices of Schwarzkopf, Sutherland, Callas and di Stefano delighted Peter and me for ever after.
PETER HIRSCHMANN 1937-2024
Peter Norman Hirschmann was born on 20 November 1937. He and I were the two scholarship boys starting together in School House in September 1951. The house was also home to the Headmaster,‘ Jimmy’ Higgs-Walker, and rather unfairly favoured over its boarding rival, Johnsons.
My first memory of Peter has him eagerly urging me to read A Labrador Doctor: The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell. I remember thinking it was an eccentric choice for young chaps like us. But perhaps Peter already knew that medicine would be his calling; his father was a GP with a practice in Hampstead Garden Suburb.
As a 13-year-old, Peter, bless him, was the very image of the stereotypical swot. With round shoulders and spectacles, sallow complexion and a nasal tone of voice, he was even less athletic – if that were possible – than myself. Yet there was a dignity about him and a degree of self-possession that commanded respect, before one even got to his intellectual giftedness and seriousness of purpose.
For all our time at Sevenoaks, Peter and I had our beds in the smallest dormitory, D Dorm, on the first floor between Matron’ s clinic and the Higgs-Walkers’ part of the house. A and B dorms were on the two floors above and as rowdy and boisterous as D Dorm was gentle and orderly. An occasional evening treat for us and other School House boys was listening to opera on 78rpm gramophone records with Mr Townson, the Park Grange house tutor. We owed a lot to him: he not only taught History, but introduced
In winter, everyone had to do rugby at least one afternoon a week. The most inept sports-wise, like us, played on Duke’ s Meadow, a field we shared with a herd of cows. Peter and I were adept at‘ dodge the ball’: that, and avoiding tumbles into the cowpats. We also joined the CCF and – most unlikely – were considered officer material.
After leaving school in 1956, both Peter and I were in London. Peter studied Dentistry at Guy’ s Hospital and University College and obtained his Fellowship in Dental Surgery of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1965. He was successful in obtaining a three-year Medical Research Council Junior Research Fellowship, part of which was spent at Harvard University. Peter had a long, illustrious career and a far-reaching influence on the development of the specialty of dental and maxillofacial radiology, winning a succession of awards. He worked in London and Manchester, and from 1992 until his retirement in 2002 he was Consultant Dental Radiologist and Senior Clinical Lecturer on Dental Radiology for the Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. He was awarded a Fellowship of the Royal College of Radiologists( FRCR) without examination in 1998. Internationally, he was best known as Editor-in-Chief of Dentomaxillofacial Radiology, a post he held from 1988 to 2001.
Throughout his years in Yorkshire, Peter was active on the Leeds contemporary arts scene, lending energetic support to a range of local initiatives. He gave full licence to his love of theatre and classical music, never missing a concert of German lieder. And, with a discerning eye, he built up a significant collection of prints and other works on paper by modern British artists.
Peter is survived by Denise, his wife since 1968, and their two daughters Joanne and Catherine.
Robert Short( OS 1955)
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