Bryan Paul Cooper was born in Leicester on 26 December 1931. His family emigrated to Australia four years later and settled in Croydon, New South Wales, where his father worked as a carpenter and joiner. Cooper was educated at the Christian Brothers, Lewisham, Sydney, from which he won an exhibition and state bursary to the University of Sydney in 1949. Here he graduated MB ChB in 1955. After a year as resident medical officer at St Vincent's Hospital he returned to England and held resident ophthalmic posts in Sunderland, at the Birmingham and Midland Eye Hospital and at Moorfields. He obtained the Diploma in Ophthalmology in July 1958 and passed the FRCS examination in 1962. He returned to Australia and practised at Blacktown, Sydney, obtaining the FRACS in 1963. He began to concentrate on neuro-ophthalmology and was a prime mover in the formation of the Australian College of Ophthalmologists, where he was a member of the executive committee and chairman of its New South Wales branch. He was consultant neuro-ophthalmologist to the Prince Henry and Prince of Wales Hospitals, Sydney, and despite the long journey from Blacktown he regularly attended his clinics and was always available for consultation if an emergency arose. His opinion was always based on meticulous examination of the patient and a deep knowledge of the neurological as well as the ophthalmological literature. In 1960 he married Mary Kevans, a nursing sister at St Vincent's Hospital, by whom he had five sons and two daughters. He diagnosed his own fatal illness having recognised its symptoms from the many patients he had treated in the past and faced it with great courage. He died on 8 November 1975.