Professor Bryan Jennett, one of the leading figures in neurosurgery of the 20th century, and co-author of the Glasgow Coma Scale for assessing head injury, has died aged 81.

As head of the neurosurgery department at Glasgow University for 23 years - including four years as Dean of the Faculty of Medicine - he pioneered techniques to help not only victims of head injury and brain disease, but also recipients of organ transplants.

His willingness to court controversy ensured that the criteria for establishing brainstem death - essential for the timely removal of cadaver organs - survived the furore stirred up by a Panorama report in 1976 casting doubt on their reliability.

Thanks in large part to Professor Jennett's advocacy, the criteria - a battery of tests to establish the absence of reaction to stimuli in patients on life support - remained in use.

He is credited as a pivotal figure in the recovery of UK donor numbers in the aftermath of the broadcast.

Professor Jennett entered an equally controversial arena when he and an American professor, Fred Plum, coined the term "persistent vegetative state" for victims of brain damage who are awake with only reflexive reaction and lack evidence of awareness.

He gave evidence in the High Court for the landmark Tony Bland case, in which PVS was established as a criterion for withdrawing artificial feeding and effectively allowing patients to die.

He took a prominent public stand against boxing and stuck his ahead above the parapet in defence of animal experiments with which the institute was linked at the time. He also wrote and lectured on the need for discriminating use of medical technology.

Professor Jennett arrived in Glasgow in 1963 as the Institute of Neurological Sciences was being established at the Southern General Hospital to replace Killearn Hospital.

Glasgow proved a dauntingly fertile field in which to develop treatment for head injuries, and the Glasgow Coma Scale he developed with Graham Teasdale remains in worldwide use today, and helped establish Glasgow as a global academic centre for innovation in this field.

He published a seminal work on epilepsy in 1962 and his benchmark Introduction to Neurosurgery was widely translated and ran to five editions.

Following his retirement in 1991 he was made CBE and his work has continued to be globally celebrated.

A graduate of Liverpool University, Professor Jennett had been a consultant neurosurgeon in the city for five years before he became professor.

Sir Graham Teasdale, who later succeeded him as professor and head of department, described Professor Jennett as possibly the major figure in academic neurosurgery from the mid-1960s over two decades.

"He had a talent for forging partnerships, and for attracting talented people to work for him and was very supportive in helping to develop their careers," he said.

"His former trainees occupy seven of the professorial chairs in neurosurgery in the UK.

"He addressed what he saw as important issues and once he had decided what was important pursued it determinedly. Without his crucial intervention on brain death transplantation would have been set back for years."