Kenneth Russell, born the son of a Melbourne Collins Street dentist, was educated at Melbourne Grammar and the University of Melbourne graduating MB BS in 1935. In 1938 he gained the MS, the surgical equivalent of an MD. In 1937 he replaced Edward Ford (qv) as Stewart Lecturer in Anatomy when Wood Jones was still professor. Ken's all consuming interest in the history of medicine was inspired by Freddy Wood Jones and nurtured by a life long asociation with Ted Ford. During the 1939 to 1946 war Ken, first as captain and then major served as a surgeon with the RAAMC in Palestine, Tobruk, Syria and New Guinea. He met Jean Fogo Wilson then a lieutenant in the Australian Army Nursing Service and married her in 1945. Theirs was a wonderfully happy marriage and excellent partnership with all sorts of shared interests.

During 1945 to 1946 he was acting outpatient surgeon to the Royal Melbourne Hospital but thereafter he returned to full-time academic life as an anatomist in the University of Melbourne: he was senior lecturer from 1938 to 1948, associate professor from 1948 to 1968. During these years most of his publications were on the historical or bibliographical aspects of anatomy and the quality of these was recognised by academic titles unique in Australia: reader in medical history from 1965 to 1969 and a personal chair in Anatomy and Medical History from 1969 to 1976. In 1968 he became the only medical graduate to be awarded Doctor of Letters in the University of Melbourne. This academic distinction was not surprising as, in 1961, with Charles Donald O'Malley he had produced a facsimile reproduction of David Edwardes: Introduction to Anatomy 1532 and, joined by Frederick Noel Poynter, the trio produced an Annotated translation of William Harvey's Lectures on the whole of Anatomy in the same year. In 1963 he produced his classic bibliography British Anatomy 1525-1800 a second edition of which appeared shorly after his death. A locally prized reference work, his history The Melbourne Medical School 1862-1962 was published in 1977.

An FRACS in 1945 he edited the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Surgery from 1949 to 1967 during which he contributed 25 papers himself. In 1945 he had been the prime mover in the acquisition for his college of the very valuable collection of old medical books, the Cowlishaw Collection: he produced an annotated reference to that collection in 1979. In that year he was awarded the RACS medal for his many contributions to the college and its committees. In 1955 he had been Thomas Vicary Lecturer of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. Under Article 44 he became a fellow of this college in 1967.

His greatest achievement was the establishement of a department of medical history in the University of Melbourne. He did this in 1965 by successfully seeking £20,000 from the Wellcome Foundation to complete the second floor of the Brownless medical Library and create thereon a reading room, a rare book room and a museum. A little later, and again from Wellcome, came the Savory and Moore Pharmacy originally in Chapel Street, London. Ken, Fogo his wife and his children John and Mary literally put the pharmacy back together again and it still graces the museum. He was by election a member of the Société d'Histoire de la Médicine, the Académie Internationale de la Médicine, the Société d'Histoire de la Pharmacie and the Bibliographical Society of London.

Ken had many skills and interests. He was a fine cabinet maker and brass turner. He was also a sinologist with an expert knowledge of chinese seals of which he had a fine collection. He made a frame so that he could carve his own seals. His collection of old medical books was the envy of many medical historians. He enjoyed a close knit family life and those privileged to dine with the Russells delighted in a Dickensian feast after which treasured books, seals, costumes or silver might be shown.

Always carefully dressed with waistcoat crossed by the chain of a gold watch, he lectured in a freshly laundered white coat and was a strict disciplinarian. He was called "Red" Russell, probably because of his red hair, but he could be irascible when he became rapidly encrimsoned and blunt, even coarse in his retorts. On one occasion when I ventured to suggest that the dress for the annual dinner of the Medical History Society be less formal that customary he barked, "If we're going to toast the bloody Queen we'll wear a black tie!". His last years were punctuated by illness including treatment for multiple solar skin cancers. Nevertheless he worked regularly in the Medical History Unit he had created and in which he was an honorary professor until his death on 9 July 1987.