Samuel Anderson Vincent, the younger son of James Vincent, a musician, was born on 13 June 1909 in Belfast. He was educated at Roseland Preparatory School and the Royal Belfast Academical Institution before entering Queen's University. After resident appointments at the Royal Berkshire Hospital, Reading, and at Tyrone County Hospital, Armagh, he served in the RAMC throughout the second world war, becoming a Major. During the war he spent some four and a half years overseas, serving on troopships as well as with medical units of the 8th Army in the Western Desert, Sicily and Italy. On demobilisation he was appointed surgeon to the Ulster Hospital for Women and Children and surgeon to Musgrove Park Hospital, Belfast. He was also lecturer in anatomy at the University of Belfast from 1948 to 1974 and a member of the Anatomical Society of Great Britain and Ireland, as well as a fellow of the Ulster Medical Society and former President of the Belfast Medical Students' Association. His published work included papers on biomedical engineering and on electrical and other aspects of enuresis in childhood. Outside his professional work he was fond of painting in water colours and playing the violin, and was a keen fly-fisherman. He married Lindsay Pine Dundee in 1951. They had no children and, when he died on 18 October 1976, he was survived by his widow.