Peter Edelman

Peter Edelman (as recalled by Ray Lowenthal)
Peter and I were closest friends for many years, as our backgrounds, education and early graduate years ran in close parallel.

We were both Jewish, though Peter was from a UK (ultimately Russian, I think) and I from a German refugee background. If my memory is correct he joined me at Neutral Bay Primary School in either third or fourth class, having migrated with his parents from the UK at the age of 6. He was an only child and had been born in London. His parents moved to Australia to join his mother’s brother (Victor Smith) who had become a successful Sydney scrap metal merchant. After Neutral Bay Primary, Peter and I went to Fort Street for the fifth and sixth grade Opportunity Classes. At Fort Street Peter was amongst the youngest having been born on 9th June 1942. Next we went to North Sydney Boys’ High School, where Peter excelled in mathematics; he had a brilliant mind. At the end of high school I have vivid memories of us together outside the Sydney Morning Herald office in Broadway at midnight one cool November evening, waiting for the Leaving Certificate results to be pasted on the wall of the SMH building. I recall that Peter was in the top 100 in the state (such results were published in those days) and came third in the state in Maths I and tenth in Maths II. We both then went on to study Medicine at Sydney University. We were together as medical students for six years, graduating in 1965, and then as resident medical officers (interns) for a further two years at Royal North Shore Hospital. Subsequently our paths diverged, though not completely.

In the late 1960s Peter, in common with many Australian medical graduates of the era, travelled to the UK for postgraduate training, in his case as an obstetrician and gynaecologist. Around this time Peter’s parents returned permanently to the UK, so he settled down there too and never came back to Australia. After qualifying Peter entered private practice (an unusual thing to do in the UK in the early years of the NHS), working for a pregnancy advisory service. He used his mathematical prowess profitably to become a top bridge player, by which means he regularly won prizes including (one that I particularly recall) a holiday in the Canary Islands.

After a short unsuccessful marriage he met and married his second wife Amy. They had two children, a son Joshua Victor and a daughter Rosieanna, in 1988 and 1989, respectively. In 2001 Peter and the family were holidaying at a resort in Turkey when he suddenly collapsed at breakfast; he was evacuated to England but died there a few days later, on 3rd September, 2001, aged 59. He will be particularly remembered for his big smile and happy-go-lucky manner, seemingly little troubled by life’s vicissitudes.

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