Tom Rowntree was a consultant surgeon in Southampton. He was born at 9, Upper Brook Street, London, W1 on 10 July 1916. His father, Cecil Rowntree, was a consultant surgeon at the Cancer (now Royal Marsden) Hospital, London, and held several other honorary posts in and around the city. His mother was Katherine Aylmer Whitworth Jones, the daughter of an opera singer. After his preparatory education, Tom went to Radley, where he passed the Higher School Certificate and matriculated for St John’s College, Cambridge, in 1933. He went up in the autumn of 1934 after an agreeable intervening six months in Rome – where he became fluent in Italian and attended anatomy classes at the university. He graduated from Cambridge in 1937 with a 2:1 degree in the natural sciences tripos (gaining a first in anatomy). He then went to St Bartholomew’s Hospital for his clinical training, where he also joined the Territorial Army (as a second lieutenant). At Bart’s he won the Matthews Duncan prize and qualified in 1941. At the outbreak of the Second World War Bart’s was moved to Hill End Hospital and there Tom was appointed house surgeon to James (later Professor Sir James) Paterson Ross, and then to John O’Connell, neurosurgeon. He then got a job demonstrating anatomy at Cambridge and passed the final FRCS in 1942. He returned to Hill End as chief assistant and was commissioned as a full lieutenant in the Royal Army Medical Corps. 1942 was a landmark year for Tom for another very particular reason; it was while back at Cambridge that he met his future wife, Barbara – Dr Barbara Sibbald as she then was. They became engaged that year and married the next. They had four children, a boy and three girls. Their son became an orthopaedic surgeon and one of their daughters qualified at Bart’s, like her father, and became a general practitioner. In 1944 Tom was posted to India as a captain in the RAMC. He was released from the Army with the rank of major in 1947. After various jobs, including accident room surgeon at Reading, a registrarship at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital and an honorary post at the Italian Hospital in London, he successfully applied for a consultant general surgical job in Southampton and started there in 1951. Tom was the quintessential general surgeon, the very embodiment of the best. He emphasised the importance of a detailed history, taken patiently, claiming it made up some 80 per cent of a diagnosis. He advocated, for instance, that the clinician sit at the bed/couch-side when examining the abdomen, the better to ensure, through the examiner’s bodily ease, that the examination is both gentle and unhurried; just one valuable lesson amongst many others. He independently discovered the curious phenomenon of abdominal wall tenderness in patients with non-specific abdominal pain, an immensely valuable physical sign. Tom’s clinical honesty demanded a searching but always kind and constructive analysis of any complication. His surgical technique was superb, always anatomical and scrupulously protective of vital structures. This manual felicity transferred readily to a long-time recreational interest, cabinet making, at which he excelled. He worked extraordinarily long hours at the hospital. His, too, was a most intelligent and enquiring mind. Its rigour – a notable characteristic – found expression in his concern that words, the vehicles of thought, be appropriate and joined in clear, simple, sentences. His intelligence, too, dominated the newly formed Southampton medical executive committee, of which he was the first Chairman, and through it deftly managed the birth of the Southampton Medical School. Tom’s surgical standing was recognised in his presidency of the surgical section of the Royal Society of Medicine. His presidential address was constructed from his large personal series of parathyroidectomies. He retired in 1981 to fish, make beautiful desks for each of his grandchildren and to interest himself in almost anything; it seemed, as with Dr Samuel Johnson, that there was no fact so trivial that he would rather not be in possession of it. Two weeks before he died he won the *Times Literary Supplement* crossword puzzle. On top of all this it should be added that Tom was a fair man, a good companion and had a lovely sense of humour. In short, he was quite a chap. He died on 26 February 2006.