Obituaries Australia

Stephan Vince could hardly have avoided war, born as he was in Vertesboglar, Hungary, of Jewish parents when his country was embroiled in World War I and sided with Germany. His mother, Margit (nee Flamm), had decided at the outset that her beloved son was not going to end up in the trenches of some future war, and that he should become a doctor, so he would cure rather than kill.

The young Vince grew up on his family's small rural landholding at Pomaz, a village near Budapest where his father, Vilmos Vogl, grew fruit and wine grapes. Vince did his schooling locally, but by the time he was ready to study medicine, anti-Semitism had swept the country and there were restrictions on Jewish students. He started a medical degree in Vienna and through lobbying on his behalf was able to graduate in Budapest, only to be swept up in World War II.

In 1940, Vince was conscripted to give medical treatment to forced labourers and was sent to a part of Transylvania granted to Hungary by the Axis powers. Life there was fairly peaceful, and having just graduated he looked up textbooks before writing prescriptions, a practice that endeared him to the peasants because it bespoke conscientiousness.

Things took a serious turn for the worse when he was sent to the Russian front, continuing to treat forced labourers. In one moment he did see some humanity in his German masters; when he and his comrades were freezing outdoors, a high-ranking SS officer told a group of Hungarian soldiers to give them shelter.

In 1943, when the Soviets broke through, Vince became a prisoner of war. Repatriated in 1945, he returned to Hungary wearing a Russian coat and fur cap. Looking like a Russian soldier, he caused alarm when he knocked at a locked gate calling out ''kapu!'' (meaning ''gate'') in Hungarian but was misheard as ''caput!', signifying he had homicidal intent. His parents and his sister, Susan, had survived the war but other relatives had died in Auschwitz.

Vince married a translator, Claire Szego, in 1947 and started practice in Budapest. He abided by his wife's request that he change his name from the Jewish Vogl to one that was Hungarian so that their offspring could more easily escape anti-Semitism.

In the 1956 Hungarian uprising, about 200,000 people opted to leave the country. Vince and Szego decided to follow Susan, who had already migrated to Australia.

Vince took advantage of a visa allowing him to attend a conference in Vienna. Adults leaving Hungary were normally obliged to leave their children behind but he had his young son's details forged on the visa to indicate that he could go with them. The guards, though suspicious, waved them through with the words: ''After all, we are leaving the day after tomorrow ourselves!''

Vince settled in Sydney and joined the staff of the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children, teaching paediatrics to final year students and building a successful private practice. His team pioneered attempts to develop a treatment for childhood leukaemia by selective destruction and replacement of bone marrow using colloidal radioactive gold, research that would lead, 50 years later, to the use of radioactive gold nanoparticles to treat cancer. In 1962, he and Szego divorced. Six years later, he married Theresa Hilton, a widow, and took on two stepchildren.

Vince, who included medical ethics in his teachings so his students could to take on a more rounded view of their role as paediatricians, complemented his clinical excellence with an endearing bedside manner, an easy way of conversing with children and consideration of parents. His love of children was reciprocated and he had a remarkable number of second-generation patients.

He had a wide circle of friends drawn to his stimulating conversations and sense of humour. Well into his 80s, he maintained a keen interest in his recreations of tennis, bridge, reading and theatre, as well as overseas travel.

Stephan Vince is survived by Theresa, son Ivan, stepchildren Andrew and Michelle and grandchildren Gaia, David, Zoe and Jamie. A granddaughter, Melanie, has predeceased him.