Born in Southampton, he moved with his family to Rochester, Kent, where he was educated at Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical school. At the outbreak of war he was recruited into the Ministry of Supply as a chemist at the Woolwich Arsenal. While there, he studied for a London University BSc, graduating in 1944. Two years later, he went to work with Dr Carl Crook, a noted endocrinologist, at the London hospital, moving with him to Birmingham in 1948. At this point their interests changed from research on the pituitary adrenal axis to ovarian function and its pituitary control: Butt began the work that brought him a PhD (1954), a DSc (1968) and an international reputation.
While others were extracting, in particular, follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) from post-menopausal urine, Butt's laboratory pioneered the isolation from cadaveric pituitary glands of FSH, the gonadotrophins, luteinising hormone and prolactin. Keeping organs from dead bodies was then regarded as acceptable practice.
Such was the purity of Butt's isolates that they were adopted as benchmarks for the standardisation of a number of hormones, and as reference molecules for their determination in biological fluids. Working with Crook at the Birmingham and Midlands hospital for women, he developed protocols, using his pituitary-derived FSH, for the treatment of infertility due to ovulatory failure. The therapeutic success of this programme in the 1960s was a major advance, allowing women who had given up hope of bearing children to become pregnant.
This and his laboratory work received worldwide recognition with, in 1978, the award of the Wellcome prize for clinical chemistry, and in 1989 the silver plate of the Society for Endocrinology. Birmingham made him an honorary professor in 1976; he had already been given a special professorship at Nottingham in 1968. From 1965, for the World Health Organisation, he advised developing countries on setting up laboratory services.
After Crook's retirement in the early 1970s, Butt's laboratory remained at the women's hospital, but the clinical centre of gravity transferred to the Queen Elizabeth, Birmingham's principal teaching hospital. This coincided with quantum leaps in research into the biochemistry and physiology of ovulatory control, including the then recent discovery and synthesis of gonadotrophin-releasing hormone from the hypothalamus and an understanding of the role of prolactin, with both areas leading to further advances in the treatment of infertility. Butt enthusiastically embarked on new lines of study in these fields.
Universally popular and respected, Butt presented his views modestly, but it was clear that he had a first-class intellect. His ideas were original, and his comments on the work of others were penetrating, usually correct and never unkind. Morale in his department was high, and it was a delight to have him as collaborator and friend.
As a young man he was an expert chess player, representing his county. He had a great love and knowledge of music, being at one time a member of the London Philharmonic Choir, and was an accomplished painter in oils, exhibiting in Birmingham and Stratford-upon-Avon, to where he retired in 1987 with his wife, Patricia, whom he married in 1951. She survives him, as do their children, Susan and John, a distinguished Bach scholar and keyboard player.
· Wilfrid Roger Butt, biochemist, born May 2 1922; died May 1 2006