My brother, Stephen Jeffcoate, who has died aged 77, was a former professor of biochemical endocrinology at the Chelsea Hospital for Women in London.
Steve was the eldest of four sons born to a Liverpool gynaecologist, Professor Sir Norman Jeffcoate, and his wife, Josephine Lindsay. He went to local schools in Liverpool and later obtained first class honours in medical sciences at Cambridge University.
He completed his medical studies at St Thomas’ hospital in London before focusing his career on clinical biochemistry. He rapidly became an acknowledged expert in the principles and techniques of hormone measurement and, in particular, on the use of the then new technique of radioimmunoassay. He moved to the Chelsea Hospital for Women in 1975 and was appointed professor of biochemical endocrinology.
With funding from the Department of Health, and later the World Health Organisation, he organised an international effort to standardise the methods used for the measurement of reproductive hormones in medical laboratories both in UK and in many other countries. This work became the basis for the WHO Special Programme for Research in Human Reproduction. His unit became a WHO coordinating centre.
Steve was author and co-author of several specialist books, including The Endocrine Hypothalamus (1978) and Efficiency and Effectiveness in the Endocrine Laboratory (1981), and almost 200 scientific papers. In 1986 he was appointed head of the endocrinology division of the National Institute of Biological Standards and Control in Hertfordshire.
His horizon was never restricted, however, to that of his professional training. He always read voraciously and at extraordinary speed and his interests covered all the arts. Given the nature of his far-ranging mind, he opted to take early retirement in 1993 and embarked on a new career in ecology and wildlife, with particular reference to butterflies. He was a co-author of the much-cited Millennium Atlas of Butterflies in Britain and Ireland (2001) and was chair of the charity Butterfly Conservation from 1999 until 2003.
Steve never lost his affection for his mother’s homeland of the Isle of Man. He joined the wildlife community there and served as chair of the Manx Wildlife Trust from 2010 until 2013.
He is survived by his third wife, Gail (nee Webber), whom he married in 1991; two of his brothers (Rob and me); three children, Cathy, Paul and Matthew, from his first marriage, to Jen (nee Lytle), which ended in divorce, and six grandchildren.
