DK. O'Donovan enrolled at University College Dublin for pre-clinical studies in one of the last medical classes to enter the portals of Newman's Catholic University Medical School building in Cecilia Street.

It closed in 1931. At his death in his 95th year, the Department of Medical Research at UCD was moving to the new Conroy Building at Belfield.

During his lifetime, Irish medicine and medical education made huge advances which he did much to shape and encourage. When he qualified, Prof J.N. Meenan described him as "the outstanding graduate of his generation in Irish medicine", an assessment of which he proved worthy. O'Donovan was a courteous gentleman of integrity, intelligence, determination and dry wit. Above all, a good doctor and gifted teacher.

Denis Kenry, third child of Denis O'Donovan, a west Cork man, and Agnes McNamara, was born in 1909 and grew up at Castleconnell. At 11 Donough (as his family knew him) witnessed the brutal murder of his father by plainclothes members of the Auxiliary Division of the RIC on April 17th, 1921.

The incident, W.T. Cosgrave later told him, so disturbed George V and others in Britain that it was an important factor in bringing about the Truce the following July. He seldom referred to this tragedy, and neither bitterness nor rancour was part of his outlook on life. Indeed, his wife was of a notable English Quaker family.

At St Vincent's, Castleknock, he captained the school to the Leinster Schools Junior Cup in 1924. Later he became president of the Castleknock Union (1960-61) and led the fundraising for the college's development in the late 1960s. His strong faith was manifest in his annual attendance at the school's Good Friday retreat for pastmen.

After an undergraduate career which saw him take every distinction and medal available, he graduated BSc (1933), MB (1934), both in first place with first-class honours, and MSc (Physiology, 1935). His clinical studies were at St Vincent's Hospital, then on St Stephen's Green.

A travelling studentship allowed postgraduate study under J.C. Collip, who had designed bulk insulin production techniques at McGill University, Montreal. This revolutionised experimental medicine, and O'Donovan wanted to be at the centre of developments. He graduated from McGill with a PhD (Biochemistry), magna cum laude (1938). He got his MD in 1941, was elected a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (London, 1963), honorary fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (1969) and awarded a DSc in 1982.

Returning to UCD, initially as researcher in physiology, he became lecturer in therapeutics (1947) and associate professor of medicine (1951). Following an OECD travelling fellowship to review education at leading US medical schools, he became senior professor of medicine (1958), dean of the faculty of medicine (1965-73), a member of the college's governing body (1967-77) and of its finance committee (1970-74), critical years in the move to Belfield.

O'Donovan subscribed to Osler's objectives for a teaching hospital: to care for the sick, teach medicine and nursing and add to the general sum of knowledge. At St Vincent's Hospital his medico-scientific background enabled him to specialise in endocrinology, then a novel speciality, pioneering endocrine services in Ireland in the 1940s. He was intimately involved in the establishment of the new hospital and teaching facilities at Elm Park, opened in 1971. He also attended St Luke's Hospital.

As professor of medicine he had an enormous impact on generations of students at Ireland's largest medical school, testimony to which are the number of his apprentices who later achieved prominence in all branches of medicine in Ireland and overseas.

Ever adept at identifying and encouraging clinical and research talent, he was an inspiring postgraduate teacher. He was a fundamentally shy man, a shyness sometimes mistaken for arrogance. Some failed to recognise his well-concealed sense of humour, so his dry wit often went unappreciated.

Among students he stimulated either deep affection and loyalty or an intense desire to avoid attention and acerbic criticism. His impatience with inefficiency or failure to deliver the best possible service to patients was legendary. He always promoted excellence, so the inauguration, to celebrate his retirement in 1977, of the D.K.

O'Donovan Medal for Medicine gave him particular satisfaction.

He considered opportunities for research the acid test of any institution's devotion to learning and set about creating a research environment. He inspired, with Paddy and Oliver Fitzgerald, the establishment of the department of medical research at Woodview in 1964.

He sat for many years on the Medical Research Council of Ireland, becoming chairman (1973-1986). His research interests reflected his clinical ones. He published in a clear style and applied his results in clinical practice. Students and colleagues alike celebrated "DK's little fingers". Having described the association between crooked fifth fingers and goitre, he continued to hypothesise on the human hand in the evolutionary process. In retirement, he expanded this interest into anthropology and the origin of species. When he died he was "going for the line" with a paper provisionally titled Iodine and the Ascent of Man.

O'Donovan was involved in many international bodies, including the European Association of Internal Medicine, the American Thyroid Association, the Thyroid Club, the Royal Society of Medicine and the Society of Endocrinology, which he helped found in 1946 in London.

There were few Irish medical organisations on which he was not invited to serve, which he always did with distinction. He was president of the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland (1975) and a founding member and president (1978-80) of the Irish Endocrine Society.

To judge his achievement one must recall his role in Irish medicine, particularly the transformation of UCD's medical school into a leading European one and development of St Vincent's as a teaching hospital on its new campus.

To the end DK read two daily newspapers and the latest scientific and medical journals with an inquiring mind. He listed swimming, study of the human hand and dry-stock farming as recreations, adding dryly "No golf!"

Irish history, too, interested him. That the megalithic tombs of the Boyne Valley predate the pyramids was to him a mark of early Irish civilisation. He considered Michael Collins the great Irishman of the struggle for independence.

With his wife he enjoyed music. He had a keen eye for painting, judging representations of the human form with the clinical eye of a first-class diagnostician. He remained an avid enthusiast for rugby football, particularly Munster rugby, and loved hurling. National Hunt racing appealed to both the countryman and the geneticist in him, although he did not gamble.

And he remained a countryman, never happier than at his house near Nenagh, on his beloved Lough Derg, where he felt at home with his neighbours and friends. His mowing of the meadow in front of the house seemed eccentric, until one realised he had carefully avoided the wild flower specimens he encouraged there.

While studying in Montreal, he met Phyllis Gill, also working at Collip's laboratory before taking her PhD from Cambridge. They married in 1939. A loving husband, father and grandfather, he is survived by Phyllis, his wife of 65 years, medical sons, Michael and Donough, and daughters, Elaine, Úna, Christine, Hilary and Ruth, and by 11 grandchildren.

Denis Kenry O'Donovan: born July 26th, 1909; died February 28th, 2004