Margaret Challis was a consultant ophthalmologist at Whipps Cross Hospital. Her parents were both doctors – her father, John Humphrey Thornton Challis, was a consultant anaesthetist at the London Hospital and her mother, Margaret Llewelyn Jones, a general practitioner in Woodford, Essex. Margaret was born in Woodford on 18 October 1934 and educated at Roedean School, Brighton, and Queen Mary College, London University. Her medical training was at the London Hospital, the third generation of her family to be trained there. After house jobs at the London she began her ophthalmology training at Moorfields Eye Hospital and then went on to St John’s Hospital, Jerusalem. She was then appointed as consultant surgeon at Whipps Cross Hospital, where she remained for the rest of her working life. She married an accountant, Mr Walters, in 1971 but had no children. Her interests were wide – as a student she played tennis for London University, but her main activity and love was horse riding and she eventually became chairman of her local club. She gardened all her life. Margaret died on 27 April 2005 of carcinomatosis after a long illness.