James Francis ‘Jim’ Carter was a general surgeon in Auckland, New Zealand. He was born on 17 March 1933 in Rawene Northland, New Zealand, one of six children of hardworking share milkers and agricultural labourers who frequently had to move to seek work in those days of depression. He was educated at Kawa Kawa High School and Kaitaia College, before studying medicine in Otago. He did his junior posts in Wellington and then spent two years in Blackball, on the west coast, serving the mining community. In 1959 he married Dorothy Rees, a staff nurse at Wellington Hospital, and in 1962 they went to England, where he passed the FRCS and worked as a registrar in London, ending as senior registrar at St Mark’s Hospital. He returned to New Zealand in 1968 as a surgical tutor and specialist in general surgery at Green Lane Hospital in Auckland. He introduced the resection and immediate anastomosis for acute left colonic conditions, which was at that time regarded as revolutionary. Two years later he founded the northern regional training scheme for surgical registrars, whereby registrars would rotate outside the main teaching centres, then a novelty in New Zealand. From 1972 he entered and developed a successful private practice, but at the same time was given an honorary academic appointment at the Auckland Medical School by Eric Nanson, who recognised his ability in clinical research. There he set up a unit for the investigation of disorders of oesophageal motility. The North Shore Hospital was opened in 1984, with Jim Carter, P G Alley, John Gillman and Kerry Clark running the general surgical service, which soon became sought-after by trainees studying for the FRACS. He was active in the Australasian College, serving on the court of examiners and its New Zealand committee, which was to become the New Zealand board of surgery and was a founder member of the New Zealand Association of General Surgeons. He was a truly general surgeon, excelling in endocrine, head and neck, colorectal and upper GI surgery. He established breast clinics at the North Shore and Mercy hospitals. A keen athlete, he was a member of the Owairaka Running Club, with several marathons to his credit, always doing his training in the early mornings. He died on 19 September 2008, leaving his widow, Dorothy, a daughter Rosemary and son Richard.