author
Geoffrey Keynes
1887–1982
A pioneering British surgeon who also became one of the best-known scholars of William Blake, he moved with ease between the operating theatre and the rare-book world. His life joined medical innovation, literary curiosity, and a deep love of books.
1 Audiobook
Blood Transfusion
by Geoffrey Keynes
About the author
Born in Cambridge in 1887, Geoffrey Keynes trained in medicine at Cambridge and St Bartholomew's Hospital before serving as a doctor in the First World War. He went on to build a distinguished career as a surgeon, becoming especially known for work on blood transfusion and for arguing that breast cancer treatment could be less mutilating than the radical operations common in his day.
Alongside medicine, he developed an equally serious life in scholarship and bibliography. He wrote and edited important studies of William Blake, worked on figures including William Harvey and John Donne, and became respected as a collector and cataloguer of rare books. That unusual combination of surgeon, historian, and bibliophile made him a distinctive public intellectual as well as a doctor.
He was part of the remarkable Keynes family and was the brother of economist John Maynard Keynes. Knighted in 1955, he remained active as a writer and scholar well after his surgical career, and his book collection later became an important resource at Cambridge. He died in 1982.