John Mayland Symes (OK 1959)

John Mayland Symes (OK 1959) was a consultant general surgeon at St Mary’s Hospital on the Isle of Wight.

He was born in 1942 and was educated at King’s, where he won the Negus Prize for Biology. He qualified in 1964 from Charing Cross Hospital Medical School and was subsequently awarded the conjoint diploma of LRCP and MRCS. He worked as a house surgeon St James’s Hospital, Balham, and a lecturer in surgery at the London Hospital Medical College, before becoming a senior registrar at the London Hospital. He specialised in vascular surgery and co-authored several papers on this area of medicine.

In 1980, drawn partly by his love of sailing, John moved from London to the Isle of Wight to take up a role as general surgeon at St Mary’s Hospital. He retained, however, a specialist interest in breast and vascular surgery and, in 1988, was part of the team who set up the Breast Cancer Screening Unit at St. Mary’s Hospital. This screening unit on the Isle of Wight was one of the first such centres to be established in the country and was later the first centre in the region to expand the age range of those invited to between 47 and 73 years.

John died on 17 March 2024 at Princess Alexandra Hospital, Portsmouth, of coronary heart disease. He is survived by his wife, Yvette Symes, and his three children, Nicky, Richard and Natalie and his nine grandchildren.