Professor Sid Watkins - Telegraph By 1981 Watkins had devised a protocol defining standards for medical centres at Formula 1 venues and emergency procedures at every circuit. Famous drivers knew and liked him. The Canadian Gilles Villeneuve joked "I hope I never need you, Prof," only to be thrown from his Ferrari during a qualifying race for the 1982 Belgian Grand Prix in Zolda. Watkins was the first to reach the stricken Villeneuve, performing emergency procedures before flying with him to a hospital in Liège. Although the driver had effectively been killed on impact, Watkins and the hospital medical team kept Villeneuve on a respirator until his wife arrived. "Then," Watkins reported, "we switched him off." But there were successes too. Watkins performed a life-saving tracheotomy on the Finn Mika Häkkinen at the side of the track in Adelaide during the 1995 Australian Grand Prix, and was in action when the Austrian Gerhard Berger crashed in flames at Imola in 1989. He was also on hand in 1990 when the Northern Irish driver Martin Donnelly was nearly killed at Jerez, only to make a complete recovery under Watkins's care. In 1994 Watkins tended Ayrton Senna after his fatal crash during the San Marino Grand Prix at Imola. The night before, Watkins had been unable to save the life of the Austrian Roland Ratzenberger, who had crashed in a qualifying heat; a distraught Senna had sought Watkins out at the medical centre and wept on his shoulder. Watkins urged him to retire from motor racing for good, pointing out that Senna had already proved himself the best driver in the world. In his book Life At The Limit: Triumph And Tragedy In Formula One (1996), Watkins recalled telling Senna: "Give it up and let's go fishing." Senna's reply was simple: "Sid, there are certain things over which we have no control. They were the last words he spoke to Watkins. The following day, while leading the race, he crashed his car into a concrete barrier. Watkins, who performed an on-site tracheotomy on Senna, later reported: "He looked serene. To date, Senna remains the last driver to have been killed in a Formula 1 race. Eric Sidney Watkins was born in Liverpool on September 6 1928. His father, from mining stock, avoided going down the pit by becoming a professional racing cyclist, and in the 1920s set up a bicycle shop in Liverpool, installing his family in a flat above. Sid, the youngest of six children, won a scholarship to Prescot Grammar School and another to Liverpool University to read Medicine. Qualifying as a doctor in 1952, he did his National Service the following year and became an Army doctor with the rank of captain. He researched heat exhaustion at a physiological unit in West Africa, returning to England six stone lighter, and after working in general surgery at Weston-super-Mare joined the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford in 1958 as a registrar under the eminent American brain surgeon Joe Pennybacker. In 1962, when he was 34, he was appointed professor of neurosurgery at the University of New York in Syracuse. Already bitten by the motor racing bug, he became one of the circuit doctors for the American Grand Prix. Finding the facilities at the medical centre limited - "The first job before practice was to sweep out the dead flies that had accumulated since the last meeting" - Watkins mustered a team from Syracuse to attend on race days so that a consultant's opinion could be sought on any injury. Returning to England in 1969, he became professor of neurosurgery at the London Hospital, now the Royal London. Then, in 1978, came the call from Bernie Ecclestone to overhaul Formula 1"s medical facilities, and to attend all 16 Grand Prix around the world. The existing state of affairs was often a shambles. When the Swedish driver Ronnie Peterson died in hospital after crashing in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza in September 1978, Watkins blamed his death on the delay in getting an ambulance to the scene. Within a fortnight, Ecclestone had provided him with a specially-equipped car in which Watkins and an anaesthetist tailed the field on the first lap of the US Grand Prix. This procedure remains standard practice in Formula 1. In a sport not noted for displays of emotion, Watkins commanded universal admiration. The Brazilian driver Rubens Barrichello, who survived a major crash on the weekend Senna was killed, tweeted: "It was Sid Watkins that saved my life in Imola 94. great guy to be with, always happy... tks for everything u have done for us drivers. RIP" Though Watkins retired as the FIA's medical officer in 2004, he continued to play a role as the first president of the FIA's Institute of Motor Sport Safety. Watkins was professor of neurosurgery at the University of London between 1972 and 1993, and latterly emeritus professor. As well as his motor-racing memoirs Life At The Limit and Beyond The Limit (2001), he published two neurosurgical studies of stereotaxic anatomy in 1969 and 1976. He was appointed OBE in 2002. Sid Watkins's wife, Susan, a historian and biographer, survives him with their four sons and two daughters. Sid Watkins, born September 6 1928, died September 12 2012