Born in South Africa, he graduated in arts at the University of Cape Town in 1922, and then came to England for his medical education. At University College, Oxford he took second class honours in the final school of physiology in 1924, and received his clinical training at the London Hospital. He served as resident surgeon at St Stephen's Hospital, and then returned to South Africa. He was for a time chief medical officer to the Rhokana corporation at Nkana, Northern Rhodesia, and then settled in practice at Killarney, Johannesburg, Transvaal, where he died in 1953.