Sir David Innes Williams - Telegraph Despite this long pedigree, urological conditions affecting children were all but ignored until well into the 20th century. Left untended, these ailments - including intersex conditions, undescended testes, urinary reflux, pelvi-ureteric junction blockages, rare cancers, bladder exstrophy (in which the bladder is partly outside the body), hypospadias, and spina bifida - can seriously impair quality of life or even cause death. As a result of Williams's efforts, however, many patients today can lead entirely normal lives. Over the next few decades Williams wrote a body of literature that consolidated and built upon previous research, so establishing the field. His papers were based on his own surgical observations; increasingly however, his efforts ensured that a small body of fellow specialists was established. Appointed in 1952 to the new position of "senior genito-urinary surgeon" at Great Ormond Street Hospital, Williams founded the Society for Paediatric Urologists (SPU) in 1963; today its membership stretches around the world. David Innes Williams was born on June 12 1919 and educated at Sherborne and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. After service with the Royal Army Medical Corps between 1945 and 1948 (in the rank of Major, Surgical Specialist) he moved as a resident to St Peter's Hospital for Stone. Over the following decades Williams helped find new treatments for children suffering from debilitating genito-urinary conditions . Crucially, as he forged ahead, he made a commitment to communicate the things he learned from his patients. Such was his intellectual magnetism early in his career that young surgeons were drawn from around the world to observe him, work with him, and then return home as disciples in the first generation of paediatric urologists. As a result, it is Williams who, despite the substantial contributions of doctors such as Campbell, is considered to have fully established paediatric urology clinically, academically and educationally. He remained at Great Ormond Street until 1978, latterly as consulting urologist. Many of his breakthroughs still form the basis of treating children today. Among other appointments, he was Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of London (1985-87); Chairman of Council, Imperial Cancer Research Fund (1982-91); President of the British Medical Association (1988-89); and President of the Royal Society of Medicine (1990-92). He was knighted in 1985. David Williams married, in 1944, Margaret Eileen Harding, formerly a theatre sister at University College Hospital. She died in 2011 and their two sons survive him. Sir David Innes Williams, born June 12 1919, died May 3 2013