Reuben Robert Bye (Bob) was born 30 January 1909, in Sydney. He was educated at Sydney Boys' High School and the University of Sydney, and graduated in medicine in 1933. Bob and wife Jean, who married in 1940, had four children; their son Bill became a well known Sydney orthopaedic surgeon, and their three girls Patricia, Margaret and Susan had interesting careers in England, and on the Continent.
Bob was a resident medical officer at the Prince Henry Hospital Sydney, and then senior resident in medicine when in 1938, the Postgraduate Committee in Medicine at the University of Sydney, established its Postgraduate Medical School at the hospital. Bob became a staff physician in 1938, when he was admitted to The Royal Australasian College of Physicians and became a Fellow of the College in 1946.
This was an exciting time in medicine, especially in an infectious diseases hospital. With the advent of sulphapyridine in the late 1930s, Bob Bye and NJ ('Jock') Symington started a clinical trial of this new drug in the treatment of pneumococcal lobar pneumonia, giving every second patient sulphapyridine. Before a week was up it was used for every patient as the benefit was so obvious.
He was a lecturer in medical nursing at Prince Henry Hospital from 1938 to 1954. He also had a visiting honorary appointment to the arthritis clinic at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, and was a Fellow of the Australian Rheumatism Council from 1952 to 1956; he was a representative on the therapeutic advisory committee.
Bob Bye was a very competent and conscientious physician. His intellectual brilliance was perhaps belied by a tolerant, taciturn disposition; he moved and spoke, slowly and deliberately. He was possessed, however, of a keen sense of humour; to determine if a party-going compatriot had imbibed perhaps too liberally, the Bye test was to place a large brass flower pot over the head of the subject and beat it with a poker. If there were no objections from beneath the flower pot, the test was positive.
His early death in 1956, from a fibrosarcoma in the gluteal region, deprived his hospital and the community of a very knowledgeable, capable and lovable physician.