Ellery Arthur Mulvihill Ryan was born in 1917 in Melbourne, the son of a leading ophthalmologist who exerted a great influence on his son's character and interest in sport of many kinds. He went to school as a boarder at Xavier College from the age of six till he was eighteen and left with the prize for the boy who had best combined his academic and sporting activities. In 1937 he entered the University of Melbourne to study medicine as a resident student of Newman College, and he enjoyed the community and social life of the College even more than his studies. After graduating in 1941 he spent a year as a resident medical officer at the Royal Hobart Hospital, and then joined the air force spending the rest of the second world war as a medical officer to the Kittyhawk Squadron at Home Island where he became extremely popular with the young pilots. On demobilization he was uncertain about his future career, but fortunately began to work as assistant to Les Doyle in Melbourne, who fired his enthusiasm for surgery and whose gentle technique and care for his patients made a lasting impression upon Ryan. He worked with Doyle for three years, and then came to England to obtain the Fellowship of the Royal Colleges of England and Edinburgh. During this period he had much less contact with patients and his enthusiasms for surgery waned - indeed he got more satisfaction out of travelling round Britain and the Continent and from fly fishing in Scotland. However, as soon as he returned to Australia he became assistant surgeon to St Vincent's and also to Prince Henry's Hospital, all his former keenness on clinical work was restored, and he soon obtained the Fellowship of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. In 1962 he was appointed surgeon to St Vincent's Hospital, and although he was sorry to have to sever his connection with Prince Henry's, his devotion to his patients and his students at St Vincent's absorbed his whole time and energy for the rest of his life, and he achieved an outstanding reputation and well-deserved popularity. At the end of war he had married Barbara Douglas Stephens and they had three children, two boys and a girl. When he died suddenly after a coronary occlusion on 1 October 1970 his wife and children survived him.