My father, Dolf Polak, who has died aged 98, was a professor of renal medicine who maintained a strong interest in music throughout his life.
He was born in The Hague in the Netherlands, but moved to London with his family when he was five years old. His parents, Jacques Polak, a lawyer who became a director of Unilever, and Connie van den Bergh, a housewife, both had a love of art and music, and Dolf learned the violin from an early age. Throughout the 1930s, the family home was a haven for Jewish refugees, many of whom were musicians.
