Louis Julius Horn was born on 31 August 1899 and was educated at the University of Sydney, Australia, where he graduated in 1923. He then spent some years in a country practice, but being possessed of considerable intellectual gifts and wishing to extend his experience he came to England in 1930, and held junior hospital appointments at the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, Hounslow Hospital, and Gloucester Royal Infirmary. He thus gained the training necessary for the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons, which he obtained in 1938. He settled in South Wales in 1944 as consultant surgeon to the Ebbw Vale Hospital where he soon established himself as a sound surgeon and a respected colleague. Louis Horn was a man of wide interests, in geology, music, languages, photography and gardening, but his devotion to the hospital always came first, and therefore his other pursuits had to be forced into the background, though he looked forward to indulging in them again after his retirement. Unfortunately, when he did retire to Hassocks in Sussex he was beset by a distressing illness from which he died on 15 June 1968. His wife and son survived him.