James Alexander Ross, MBE, surgeon and former President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh; born June 25, 1911; died April 12, 1997

James Ross had a keen interest in surgical history, and played a significant part

in one of its more recent achievements.

He was one of the two lead surgeons in the teams which carried out Britain's first successful kidney transplantation at Edinburgh in October 1960. Ross harvested the living kidney from one of the identical twins while his colleague, Professor, now Sir Michael, Woodruff, led the team which then successfully implanted the graft into the recipient.

''He was a fine colleague and I had a great deal of affection for him,'' Sir Michael said.

James Ross was born in Edinburgh but spent much of his early life in Brazil, where his father worked as a bank manager. Educated at Merchiston Castle School, with which he retained close links throughout his later years, he graduated in medicine from Edinburgh University in 1934.

During the Second World War he served with distinction in the Royal Army Medical Corps, first treating Dunkirk casualties and later overseas in Egypt and with the Eighth Army in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy. He landed with the troops at Anzio and his clearing station tended to the wounded during a month of intense fighting which followed the ultimately abortive attempt to establish a bridgehead be-hind the German lines.

For his courage at this time he was awarded the military MBE. He rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and later published, under his initials rather than his name, a diary of his war experiences, Memoirs of an Army Surgeon.

On his return to Edinburgh he obtained his MD in 1947, and took up surgical posts at Leith Hospital and the Royal Infirmary, acting as chief assistant to Professor Woodruff after his appointment to one of Edinburgh's two chairs of surgery in 1957.

From 1961, Mr Ross became head of a new general surgical unit at the Eastern General Hospital in Edinburgh where he did much to develop

the newly-emerging speciality of urology.

He published on this subject and on surgical anatomy but his great passion in later life was for the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. Elected a fellow in 1937, he became the college secretary in 1960 and president in 1973, during which time he helped forge many intercollegiate links and pave the way for subsequent reforms in surgical education.

A cheerful and extrovert man, he was widely-travelled and festooned with many overseas honours and fellowships. He harboured two passions, one for the works of Charles Dickens and the other for watching cricket.

In 1978, Mr Ross published a history, the Edinburgh School of Surgery after Lister followed up with his own Memoirs of an Edinburgh Surgeon a decade later which was published privately.

After his retirement he was appointed Professor of Anatomy at the King Saud University at Riyadh in Saudi Arabia.

Mr Ross, who lived in Morningside, died at a nursing home. His wife Cathy, whom he met during the war, died in 1988. He is survived by his daughter, Elizabeth, and a

son, David.