Aaron Gordon Signy (Sinaiewsky)

Aaron Gordon Signy was born in Stepney, London to parents who had recently migrated from Russia; his father was a rabbi at the New Synagogue. Aaron lived at 23 Alwyne Road, Canonbury, for much of his adult life.

Qualifying when pathology was still in its infancy, Signy served initially at the Great Ormond Street Hospital in Bloomsbury and the London Fever (later, Royal Free) Hospital in Islington. His obituary in the British Medical Journal tells us that he went on to develop the pathology service at St Mary Abbot’s and then St Stephen’s Hospitals ‘to such a pitch that at his retirement his department had become one of the finest and most sophisticated in the country’. He is credited with making major contributions to the then new professions of pathology and haematology, establishing the British Journal of Clinical Pathology and helping to found the Royal College of Pathologists.

He was also a keen sportsman, most especially in fencing. He captained the British Olympic team in in Tokyo in 1964 and Mexico City four years later, along with World Championships teams at Gdansk, Moscow, Montreal and Vienna. His obituary in the Epée Club’s journal said, ‘a more popular team captain could not be imagined, as he contrived to gain and keep the friendship and respect of all the British trainees. For him the generation gap just did not exist. Gordon had that happy knack of being able to mix on equal terms with those of all ages and backgrounds’.