I first met Keyvan Mogissi, who died aged 98, in 1980, while sharing an apartment with his son Alexander, a close friend of mine. Keyvan was a distinguished cardiothoracic surgeon; what he really enjoyed was healing people. His kindness, caring, and compassion for his patients were known and reflected in his memoirs, Off My Chest: Tales of a Cardiothoracic Surgeon (2018), From My Heart (2024), and In My Memory (2025).
Born in Tehran, as he liked to remind people, still known as Persia, Keyvan was the second of six children of Monireh Rouhani, a teacher, and Ahmad Moghisi-Shirazi, a civil servant; The family were members of the progressive, peaceful, often persecuted Baha'i faith.
An intelligent and inquisitive boy, Keyvan went to Dar ul-Funun High School and then followed his older brother to medical school in Tehran; in 1947 he entered the University of Geneva, Switzerland, where he received a degree in surgery. Initially beginning an academic career, he became a practicing physician after visiting Britain in 1954 to study cardiothoracic surgery.
He settled in Britain, meeting Elsie (née Alexander), an ophthalmic nurse at Moorfields, in Geneva. They got married in the mid-50s. Keyvan worked at various hospitals, including Edgware, Nottingham and Southampton, and performed cardiothoracic surgery in Hammersmith, Harefields, Middlesex and Great Ormond Street; in 1970 he was appointed consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at Castle Hill Hospital, Hull. There, far from the fountains and pomegranates of Persia, he set about creating a major European center for cardiac surgery and analytical research.
In 1979 he founded the European Club of Thoracic Surgery, the forerunner of the European Association of Cardiothoracic Surgery, of which he was president in the 1980s. Keyvan pioneered various surgical developments such as cardiac bypass surgery, laser surgery and photodynamic therapy. His awards are too numerous to list, and while he was satisfied with them, he was most proud of his accomplishments as an improver and sometimes saver of lives. Known for his generous humor, he took medicine personally and for individuals seriously. It was often difficult. Retired in 1994.
At school, Keyvan learned to play the violin so well that he was accepted as a student of Abolhasan Saba, widely revered as a great teacher of Persian and Western classical violin. Keyvan later wrote: “My personal therapy for stress is to retire to my office for 20 minutes and listen to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.”
Elsie died in 2021. Keyvan is survived by Alexander, his grandchildren Miko and Johnny, and his siblings Minu and Chala.
