I was born in South Africa and obtained my medical degree with honors from the University of Cape Town in 1070. I emigrated from apartheid-era South Africa after my junior doctor training at Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town, and subsequently trained in internal medicine at the Royal Free Hospital, London England. I continued my training as a postdoctoral research fellow at Stanford University where I completed my residency in anesthesia in 1981. After joining the faculty in the Department of Anesthesia at Stanford, I received successive promotions to become a tenured professor and Vice-Chair for Research. In 1999, I was recruited to become the Magill Professor of Anaesthesia at Imperial College, London and subsequently became the Chair of Surgery, Oncology, Reproductive Biology and Anesthesia at Imperial College. In 2009, I was recruited to become the Chair of Anesthesia and Perioperative Care at UCSF which I held for 5 years before transitioning to full-time research at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General, the county-hospital campus for UCSF.

My career in sponsored research began under the tutelage of Dame Sheila Sherlock in 1974 and has been a major focus of my academic activities for more than 50 years. During that time, I have been funded and led laboratories at Stanford, Imperial College, and UCSF. I have published more than 300 peer-reviewed publications and received several national and international awards for my research. According to Google Scholar (accessed 7-29-25), my h-index is 104 and I have over 42,000 citations.

I have been married to Janet Wyner MD for 56 years and have two children (Brad and Jacqui) and 6 grand-children.