Born in Liverpool, T Cecil Gray was educated at Ampleforth and Liverpool University Medical School. His first appointment was in General Practice, where Robert Minnitt encouraged him to take the Diploma in Anaesthetics in 1941. Following war service in North Africa he resumed his career in Liverpool and was appointed University Demonstrator in Anaesthesia in 1945. In 1946 he published Curare, a Milestone in Anaesthesia? with Jack Halton, describing its use in one thousand surgical cases, the first such report in Britain.

Gray was appointed head of the new Department of Anaesthesia in 1947 with the title of Reader. The status of the Department earned him a personal chair in 1959. He developed a postgraduate course for higher qualifications in Anaesthesia, negotiating for senior house officers in the NHS to attend daily university lectures, a concept ahead of its time.

He served his university and specialty in many ways. He was Dean of the Faculty of Anaesthetists, President of the Anaesthetic Section of the Royal Society of Medicine, President of the Association of Anaesthetists and Editor of the British Journal of Anaesthesia. Honours have included a CBE and a Knight of the Order of St Gregory.