Austin Doyle was born in Yorkshire, England, the son of Austin Roland Doyle, a general practitioner and Ruby Elizabeth Doyle. He was educated at Exeter School, and graduated in medicine from Guy’s Hospital Medical School (University of London) in 1946. He spent two years in the Royal Navy Reserve before undertaking vocational and research training at the Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith Hospital, where he was awarded an MD. He then took up a Medical Research Council Fellowship to work with Sir Horace Smirk at the Wellcome Institute in Dunedin, New Zealand. After three years there, he returned to the Hammersmith Hospital to work with Sir John McMichael. In 1957 he accepted a position as First Assistant and Reader in the recently formed University of Melbourne Department of Medicine at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. In 1966 he took up the appointment as Foundation Professor and Chairman in the University of Melbourne Department of Medicine at the Austin Hospital, a position he held until he retired in 1985. After his retirement he continued to be active in clinical research, based at St Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne, and he also served as Dean of Graduate Studies at the Repatriation General Hospital, Heidelberg.

His effect on academic medicine in Australia was profound. He established a strong tradition that university departments of medicine should not just concentrate on teaching and clinical duties. They should be centres of excellence in basic and clinical research. Moreover, hospital departments and their directors were expected to aspire to the same standards of excellence in research. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the Division of Medicine at the Austin Hospital came to be recognised nationally and internationally for its contributions to clinical research and to basic science.

Austin Doyle's own research centred on the mechanisms and treatment of high blood pressure, and over the years he attracted and nurtured many brilliant young investigators in this field. He published extensively, and was rightly regarded worldwide as one of the founding fathers and doyens of hypertension research and management. He was an excellent speaker whose international influence and standing resulted as much from the spoken word as the written.

Austin Doyle's influence on academic medicine extended well beyond his own field of hypertension. He was a superb undergraduate and postgraduate teacher and a first rate clinician who taught generations of medical students and young resident doctors. He attracted to the Austin Hospital a large number of talented young clinician investigators in fields other than his own, many of whom become leaders in their disciplines, subsequently moving on to Chairs of Medicine, Clinical Pharmacology or Physiology around Australia or overseas.

He was Foundation President of the Australasian Society of Nephrology, President of the Australian Society of Clinical and Experimental Pharmacologists, Foundation President of the High Blood Pressure Research Council of Australia, and President of the International Society of Hypertension. His contributions to the activities of the College included being a Councillor, Chairman of the Medical Manpower Advisory Committee, Chairman of the Medical Advisory Committee, and Chairman of the Specialist Advisory Committee in Clinical Pharmacology.

Austin Doyle's influence on so many areas of research, clinical medicine and teaching had ensured his pre-eminence as an outstanding contributor to Australian medical science, medicine and medical education. His contributions were acknowledged in 1986 when he became an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO).

He married Jill Simpson in 1948 and they had three sons and a daughter. In his youth he was a national hockey champion; in later life he was a passionate golfer. His other passions were music and ballet. He died suddenly at Auckland Airport on 22 February 1993.