Born at Invercargill, New Zealand on 30 April 1912, son of Wilfred Francis Bisset a newspaper owner and his wife Christina Scott Rew, daughter of Robert Rew an Auckland merchant. He was educated at Invercargill and graduated from Otago Medical School, Dunedin in 1936. After a short time as a house surgeon at Christchurch Hospital he came to England, held resident posts at the Middlesex and Royal Cancer Hospitals in London, assisted Lawrence Abel, FRCS, took the Conjoint Diploma and the Diploma in Anaesthesia in 1939, and obtained the Fellowship in 1940. Bisset served through the second world war as a Surgeon-Lieutenant in the Royal Navy, first at Kingseat Hospital and afterwards on active service in the North African and Sicilian campaigns. For a few years after the war he worked at the South Devon and East Cornwall Hospital, Plymouth, but the effects of his war experience undermined his enthusiasm and energy, leading to mental instability which destroyed his very promising career. He had married on 22 March 1944 Janet Nichol Sloan and a son and two daughters were born to them; but in the early 1950s his mental illness led to their separation and his complete retirement; he regained serenity under the care of a close friend during the last years of his life, and kept in touch with his family, who all survived him, with his elder daughter's two sons; his three children had all graduated with honours, though none had taken up medicine. He died of coronary illness on 19 May 1972, aged sixty.