Educated in Cairo, Yacoub taught at Chicago, and moved to Britain in 1962 where he became a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at Harefield Hospital, and then director of medical research and education from 1992. He was appointed professor at the National Heart and Lung Institute in 1986, and was involved in the development of the techniques of heart and heart-lung transplants. In 1980 came his transplant operation on Derrick Morris, who until his death in July 2005 was Europe’s longest-surviving heart transplant patient. Among celebrities whose lives Magdi Yacoub extended was the comedian, Eric Morecambe, and in 2002 he was selected to spearhead a government recruitment drive for overseas doctors. He was knighted in 1992 by HM Queen Elizabeth II.

Having retired from performing surgery at the age of 65, he briefly came out of retirement last year, to advise on a complicated procedure which required removing a transplant heart from a patient whose own heart had recovered.