Frank Cockett was internationally known for his ground-breaking advances in the understanding of varicose veins and venous ulcers. He identified a new condition called the 'ankle blow out syndrome' and described the operation needed to cure it, which became universally known as 'the Cockett operation'. He was also a noted expert on early English marine paintings, being an adviser on this subject to Christie's auctioneers. Born in Rockhampton, Australia, on 22 April 1916, the son of the Reverend Charles Bernard Cockett, a Congregational minister, and Florence Cockett née Champion, Frank Cockett spent his early life in Tasmania before coming to England in the 1920s when his father took up a post in Bedford. He was educated at Bedford School and then the City of London School, before winning a scholarship to St Thomas's Hospital Medical School, where he gained a first class honours degree in physiology before qualifying in medicine just before the outbreak of war. He became a house surgeon at St Thomas' in 1940 and was resident during the time the hospital was bombed with severe damage and loss of life. Throughout the Blitz, he was one of a small band of less than 10 doctors who kept the largely evacuated hospital open for the emergency treatment of the injured public. Operating day and night in makeshift theatres in the basement, where he also slept, he wrote contemporary descriptions of his experiences in letters home. These make vivid reading and were later published in a book entitled *The war diary of St Thomas's Hospital 1939-45* (Newport, Gwent, Starling, 1991). After house jobs, he became a resident surgical officer in Guildford, before joining the Royal Air Force in 1942 and serving abroad as a squadron leader, mainly in Malta and Gozo. Here he saw the end of the siege of Malta and the beginning of the invasion of Sicily. This period of his life was later entertainingly described in his book *The Maltese penguin* (Smith-Gordon & Co Ltd, London, 1990) (a penguin being a flightless bird, it was also RAF slang for a non-flying officer, 'one of the lower forms of life during wartime'). *The Times* obituary recorded that, when his children refused to eat their meals, he would tell them how the people of Malta had to survive on only a dry biscuit in the morning and a large glass of water; half you drank and the rest was to wash your face and clean your teeth! He was then posted to Italy, before spending his final months in uniform in Algiers. In 1945 he married and returned as a civilian to a junior surgical post at St Thomas', before becoming a senior lecturer in surgery. He was put in charge of the very busy leg ulcer clinic; this was thought by his seniors to be a non-exciting clinic dealing with a non-exciting condition, the cause of which was poorly understood. It was branch of surgery that his more senior consultants shunned, but Cockett rose to the challenge and began the research which was to lead in time to his pre-eminent position as an international authority on venous disease. Over the months he carried out a meticulous series of cadaver limb dissections, investigated his patients by the new technique of venography and performed numerous open operations. By 1953 he had established that lower leg ulcers were not caused by conventional varicose veins, as previously had been thought, but by incompetent ankle perforating veins and that the appropriate treatment was their surgical ligation. This work was published in *The Lancet* ('The ankle blow-out syndrome; a new approach to the varicose ulcer problem.' *Lancet* 1953 Jan 3;1[6749]:17-23) and resulted in the award of a master of surgery degree. He was appointed a consultant and in 1956, with Harold Dodd, published a 400-page textbook *The pathology and surgery of the veins of the lower limb* (Edinburgh, London, E & S Livingstone), which immediately became the definitive text. A second edition was published in 1976. Cockett also wrote widely about venous compression syndromes and described anatomical compression of the left iliac vein. Although appointed a general surgeon, his vascular interest rapidly became dominant. In 1966 he was a founding member of the Vascular Society of Great Britain and Ireland, and in 1980 was elected president. A few years later he became chairman of the venous forum at the Royal Society of Medicine. Although having a flourishing private practice in which he employed generations of junior staff to assist, he never neglected his NHS responsibilities at St Thomas', nor did he neglect the teaching of medical students. He was a popular teacher and he and his wife regularly entertained students at their home - hospitality which has long remained in the memories of those who attended. Students, staff and colleagues all knew him as someone with a total lack of pomposity and a man of many unsung acts of kindness and thoughtfulness. He was much loved and devoid of enemies. Outside of surgery, Cockett was a keen sportsman; skiing, squash, tennis, swimming, but above all sailing, which he had learned while stationed in Malta. He became the owner of a series of boats, culminating in a steel-hulled ocean racing yacht appropriately named *Saphena*, its dinghy being called *Varix*. Generations of students and junior staff crewed for him until advancing age caused him to abandon the ocean and settle for gentle cruising with family. His interest in sailing led to an interest in marine art and as he approached retirement this hobby became an all absorbing occupation. He haunted the auction rooms between clinics, getting to know the dealers and adding to his personal collection of marine paintings, which came to decorate every inch of wall space in his home. Always carrying a magnifying glass, he became an authority on early English marine paintings and an adviser to Christie's. In 1993, while convalescing from a serious motoring accident, he occupied his time by writing and two years later publishing a book entitled *Early sea painters, 1660-1730: the group who worked in England under the shadow of the Van de Veldes* (Woodbridge, Antique Collectors' Club, c.1995), which chronicled the rise of marine art in England. Richly illustrated, many of the plates depicted paintings in his own collection. A few years later, he published a second scholarly monograph, a biography of Peter Monamy, the first English marine artist of stature (*Peter Monamy [1681-1749] and his circle* Woodbridge, Antique Collectors' Club, c.2000). He was also absorbed by all matters relating to the history of St Thomas' Hospital. He was a founder member of the history and works of art committee, serving as chairman for 12 years and he wrote numerous historical vignettes for the *St Thomas's Hospital Gazette*. He was instrumental in mounting a successful appeal among ex-St Thomas's students that enabled the erection in the hospital chapel of a handsome carved stone memorial to the 52 St Thomas's-trained doctors who had lost their lives on active service during the Second World War, some of whom he knew personally. Tragedy struck his private life in 1958 when his wife Felicity Anne (née Fisher) was killed in a road traffic accident, leaving him with three small children, Judy, who became an art historian; Sally, a general practitioner; and Robin, a professor of computer science. Two years later he married Dorothea Newman, a physiotherapist at St Thomas'. They had twin sons, Peter, a civil servant, and Richard, a journalist. Frank remained exceedingly active in his twilight years and only began to ease up slightly as he passed the age of 90, when he became increasingly deaf and slowly more frail. His intellect remained as sharp as always and he was ever eager to know the latest hospital gossip. Eventually the old man's friend caught up with him and he died of pneumonia on 17 January 2014 aged 97.