Professor Geoffrey Raisman: The tailor's son who performed a medical miracle

The man behind the pioneering spinal surgery that helped a paralysed man walk is adamant about where he got his drive to succeed - it was growing up in a working class Jewish family.

Professor Geoffrey Raisman stunned the medical world with a ground-breaking operation to treat a knife victim's damaged spine by transplanting cells from his nose.

But he is uneasy with the recognition that has followed, insisting his Lithuanian ancestor family's struggle to make ends meet keeps him grounded. Praise for his medical breakthrough, he says, makes him "wince".

"It makes me feel dreadful," says the 75-year-old. "Maybe I'm a genius, I don't know. What I don't like is a label that separates me from you, from people.

"There was always, for me, a pull in both directions. How could I have a fulfilling life as a scholar, a student - and at the same time not lose the connection to the people and culture I came from?"

Prof Raisman led a team at University College London's Institute of Neurology whose research enabled surgeons in Poland to treat firefighter Darek Fidyka, 38. The results came to light in a BBC Panorama documentary on Tuesday in which Mr Fidyka, paralysed from the waist down, was seen walking again.

Prof Raisman said: "My life has been worth living. I have not only been able to follow my hobby, but it has been of value to people. Who can ask for more?"

He is even modest about his achievement, insisting: "It's the first case."

Years earlier, he wrote a book about his life. The Undark Sky: a story of four poor brothers tells how his family settled in Leeds, where he later became a member of Chapeltown Road New Synagogue.

His grandfather, Moshe Dovid Raisman, a tailor, was "a great gambler," he recalled.

"He had two activities in his life. One was to gamble away any money he had. The other was to generate the children who were to keep him in his future life.

"They were brought up in the slums of Leeds. They slept in the same bed, head-to-tail like sardines."

He says his father Harry, also a tailor, and his uncle Sir Jeremy Raisman, the finance member of the Viceroy of India's executive council during the Second World War, were key figures in his life.

"They influenced me positively and negatively," he says. "They spoke as one voice. They wanted me to be ambitious in terms of my own career."

He believes that the story of eastern European Jewish immigrants still has resonance today. "This country is a melting pot. People from different cultures are moving around and opportunities are presented, both to advantage and great resistance. Of course, my family went through all that, as all immigrant Jews did. There was antisemitism but we don't have to talk about that.

"There were opportunities, barriers and cultural adaptations. Jews now are trying to hang on to a culture that came from Russia or Poland without seeing we're in a different world.

"I think we're far too insular, far too inward looking. It doesn't do us any good.

"The Jewish contribution to civilisation is enormous considering our size. We've got to understand that we've got to live in a way that makes us able to contribute. Turning in on ourselves and becoming more archaic about pre-medieval Talmudic things that have nothing to do with the modern way of life benefits neither us nor them."

A spokesman for the Board of Deputies said: "We are absolutely in awe. What could be a greater reflection of Jewish contribution to British life than enhancing and saving lives?"