Carl de Gruchy was born in Melbourne in the early years following the First World War. His father, a pharmacist, died whilst Carl was only a child but he and his sister were brought up by a mother who was a person of unusual resource and determination. Carl was educated at Christian Brothers' colleges and later at Xavier College, Melbourne, where he showed very considerable academic talent. He studied medicine at the University of Melbourne between 1939 and 1944, gaining many distinctions during his course. After graduation he studied pathology at the University of Melbourne and trained in medicine at St Vincent's Hospital, where he had been a student, working under Dr John Hayden who was to become the Hospital's first professor of medicine.

Carl chose to specialise in haematology and travelled to England in 1949 where he carried out outstanding work on haemolytic anaemias under John Dacie, later Professor Sir John. After extending his research interests as Rockefeller Fellow in Medicine in the United States, he returned to St Vincent's Hospital to establish the discipline of haematology both in the laboratory and in the wards. The combination of laboratory research and his role as honorary physician to outpatients led to the unified clinical and laboratory approach to haematology which was to characterise his whole career; this was further strengthened when he became first assistant in the University department of medicine on its establishment in 1958 and when he succeeded to the chair of medicine following the death of John Hayden in 1962.

Carl de Gruchy was undoubtedly best known for his very successful textbook Clinical Haematology in Medical Practice,/i> which was first published in 1958. His research interest in the non-spherocytic haemolytic anaemias brought biochemical expertise into the department. This was later very successfully turned to address the problems of platelet metabolism by Jack Hirsh whom Carl recruited to a career in academic haematology. He also recruited Albert Baikie to work as his first assistant and to advance the study of cytogenetics in haematology, and was instrumental in fostering the development of both clinical work and research in the very difficult field of alcoholism which prospered under the leadership of Jim Rankin, and later Joe Santamaria.

Carl was a major international figure in haematology and became president of the International Society in 1964 and president of its congress held in Sydney in 1966. He had a major influence on many careers, taking great trouble to smooth the path for able young men; his reputation as a clinical teacher as well as an author stood high throughout his whole career. He was a sensitive and perceptive clinician but, being an enormously conscientious person, he found the burdens of his very many commitments difficult to reconcile with the very high standards he set for himself in every field which he touched, whether this was clinical or laboratory haematology, authorship, research supervision, administration of his department, arrangements for meetings, pursuit of hobbies such as 17th century art or just arranging social functions. Nonetheless, in everything that he touched, kindness to all with whom he had dealings was an overriding characteristic.

In 1969 he reached the decision to resign the chair of medicine so as to devote himself to further writing and to his hobbies. It was tragic that only months thereafter he was found to have a malignant melanoma which, although resected, recurred three years later. During the interval, he was able to enjoy international travel which he dearly loved, to complete most of the work for a book on haematological side-effects of drugs which was published after his death and to achieve a significant part of a further revision of Clinical Haematology. He faced his terminal illness with characteristic courage and continuing concern for both his immediate family of a mother and sister and for the future well-being of St Vincent's Hospital and of his department. He is perhaps most fondly remembered by the many students who benefited from his teaching, by junior staff members whose careers he assisted and by the many clinical haematologists around the world who got to know him at international meetings. He is also remembered by the many trainees in haematology who still carry the robust commonsense expressed in his textbook into their clinical practice of haematology.