The eminent transplant surgeon, born in Calcutta, served in the army before becoming a registrar in surgery at Bishop Auckland. Soon after his marriage in 1959 Taylor joined the rotation at the Newcastle teaching hospital. He was not to leave Newcastle for the rest of his career. By 1970 he was a consultant surgeon and senior lecturer at the Royal Victoria Infirmary, and the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.

In 1973 Taylor took over the Newcastle renal (kidney) transplant programme as its director. By the time of his retirement in 1995 he had performed more than 2000 transplant operations, and had built up not only one of the major renal transplant programmes in the UK but a programme that was a leader in clinical and immunological transplantation research. The transplant unit trained a large number of transplant surgeons and Taylor personally supervised some fifteen research fellows, all of whom achieved a higher degree in transplantation research. At the time of his death five of the major transplant units in the UK were led by people he had trained.