Frederick Zammit Maempel and John Samut Tagliaferro write:

Denis Soler was our good and trusted friend for 50-odd years. We met as university students joining the course of medicine, and by divine providence we were thrown together for the next five years in the same students group. It was immediately clear that the good Lord had bestowed upon Denis a more than generous dollop of fine attributes, not least his imposing figure and keen intellect, and he employed these to the full.

Denis was hard-working and focused, but also had a sense of humour and a contagious liking for harmless mischief, with an easy propensity to chuckle, and his demeanour helped ease the demanding five-year stint of undergraduate medical study.

He graduated in 1973 at the top end of class and decided that general practice was his calling. He soon established a highly successful practice, principally in the Sliema area, and was much loved by his many patients, not only because he was a true professional, a caring physician, knowledgeable and meticulous, but also because of his pleasant character and evident humanity.

Denis was a leader and a great organiser, determined on establishing family practice in Malta as a speciality in its own right to bring us in line with the rest of Europe. With others, he was instrumental in setting up the Malta College of Family Doctors in 1989, and he was the natural choice to be appointed founding president.

The next step was to fill the void in the academic field, and in 2001 the Department of Family Medicine was set up within the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery in the University, where Denis was head of department, lectured and published papers on the subject.

Denis possessed a good measure of common sense. He was certainly opinionated and articulate and argued his corner in a cool and calm manner, never leaving much doubt as to where he stood on the matter. He lived and practised to the highest ethical standards and sat on the Medical Council of Malta for a decade, ensuring that these standards were upheld by the medical fraternity. He was a fair and uncompromising judge of patients’ grievances.

Of late, Denis was in semi-retirement. There was a time when he joined the boating fraternity, but his days at sea were cut short by a medical mishap which affected his speech. He jokingly explained that dialogue on the VHF system with Valletta Port Control in a slurred disjointed voice was liable to be misunderstood, and, worse, be misinterpreted as the result of a ‘happy hour’ on his boat. But the regular long weekends at his cliff-edge place in Żebbuġ, Gozo, more than compensated for the cessation of life at sea. Denis also found time to organise our most enjoyable course reunions.

Having walked close to him for half a century on this journey called life, we know how much Marie meant to him. She was a constant pillar of support in all that he achieved and he achieved much. He understandably thought the world of her and their daughters, Ingrid and Fiona.

We are privileged to have known Denis as a dear and trusted friend, to have sought his opinion and advice on many an occasion and to have been the recipients of his kindness and humanity. We salute this fine gentleman whom we shall sorely miss.