Jacquez Charl 'Kay' de Villiers studied Medicine at the University of Cape Town. Following graduation and internship at Groote Schuur Hospital, he commenced general practice in Swellendam for four years before taking up a lecturer post in Anatomy in 1957 at the newly established University of Stellenbosch Medical School, as a prelude to the FRCS exam and surgical training in London in 1960. Encountering a family where five generations had suffered from polycystic kidney disease, he started researching this, culminating in an MD thesis on the genetics of this condition.

Kay de Villiers spent five years in the UK, undergoing neurosurgical training at the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases, Queen Square and Atkinson Morley’s Hospital, Wimbledon. During this time he was mentored by Mr Wylie McKissock, doyen of British neurosurgery. Training in neurosurgery before the advent of the CT scanner was brutal and relentless but he found time to immerse himself in history, literature and poetry, and excelled academically, winning a research fellowship to spend a year studying head injury in the laboratory of Dr Tom Langfitt in Philadelphia.

Upon his return to South Africa in 1966, Kay de Villiers was appointed as the first full-time neurosurgeon at Groote Schuur Hospital, and devoted the remainder of his career to this institution. He followed De Villiers Hamman as Head of Department in 1972 and was honoured as the first incumbent of the Helen and Morris Mauerberger Chair of Neurosurgery.

While his research interests were those of any dedicated clinician, reflecting the diversity of conditions he encountered in his daily practice, he made special contributions to the understanding of head injury in children, in work done with Dr Marian Jacobs. Prof de Villiers was the face of Neurosurgery in South Africa, pioneering new techniques through time spent in Zurich, Charlottesville and Paris - the latter allowing him to bring back the new technique of trans-sphenoidal pituitary surgery.

He led Neurosurgery at UCT for 22 years during which time the clinical service moved from its first home in J Block to the New Main Building. Prof de Villiers’ contributions extended beyond the hospital, making an enormous impact on Medicine and Higher Education in South Africa. His decisive leadership found him serving as president or chair of several learned organisations including the Society of Neurosurgeons of South Africa, and is the only South African elected an Honorary President of the World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies. A highlight was his tenure as Chair of Council of the University of the Western Cape in the 1980s, where his talent for annoying the political establishment was rewarded with an Honorary DSc in 1989.

In addition to his love of clinical neurology, his over-arching passion was history. A Wellcome Foundation travelling fellowship in 1998 enabled him to research medical aspects of the Anglo-Boer War, which led to numerous publications and culminated in his magnum opus Healers, Helpers and Hospitals: A history of Military Medicine in the Anglo-Boer war, winner of the UCT Book Award in 2011. He was determined to bring history to life and devoted his retirement to establishing the Cape Medical Museum which established the annual Kay de Villiers lecture in his honour.