Alfred Murray Clarke was born at Kui Kiang, China, on 11 January 1909. His father was Ernest Edward Clarke a missionary and his mother Marina, née More, was a teacher. His early education in China was from his mother and in 1921 at the age of twelve he went to Caulfield Grammar School, Melbourne, for five years before entering the University of Melbourne for his medical studies. His younger brother, James Eric Clarke, also entered medicine and became an eminent physician. He qualified in 1932 and spent two years as resident medical officer at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne. He was then registrar at the Royal Children's Hospital before coming to England for further postgraduate training in 1936. He served as house surgeon at the British Postgraduate Medical School and later at Great Ormond Street and in 1938 after attending courses at University College, London and St Bartholomew's Hospital passed both the FRCS and the DCH. On his return to Australia in 1938 he was appointed assistant surgeon to the Children's Hospital in Perth and also assistant surgeon to Perth General Hospital. He joined the Australian Army Medical Corps in July 1939 but remained at Perth until 1941 when he was seconded as a surgical specialist with the rank of Major to Heidelberg Military Hospital to study plastic surgery under Sir Benjamin Rank. In 1943 he was posted as surgeon in charge of the maxillofacial and plastic surgery unit of the Australian General Hospital at Bougainville in the Solomon Islands. After demobilisation in 1946 he was appointed honorary general surgeon at the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne, and honorary paediatric surgeon to the Alfred and Women's Hospitals in Melbourne and six years later transferred all his work to the Royal Children's Hospital where he instituted the first specialist paediatric burns unit in Australia. He conducted research into the causes of thermal injury in children and introduced burns safety procedures. He wrote extensively on burn injuries in children and was invited as guest lecturer to speak at Brooke Army Medical Center, San Antonio, Texas, in 1970 after which he was made an honorary Texas citizen. He returned to the United States in 1979 to received the Everett Idris Evans medallion from the American Burns Association and to deliver the memorial lecture. He contributed chapters on the spleen, pancreas and bile duct and also on burns to the textbook *Clinical paediatric surgery*, edited by P G Jones, and wrote the chapter on choledochal cyst in *Operative surgery*, edited by H H Nixon. He was founder editor of the *Australian and New Zealand Burns Association journal* serving from 1974 until 1984 and was a member of many committees concerned with the prevention and treatment of burn injuries in children. He served as Dean of the clinical school at the Royal Children's Hospital from 1964 to 1970 and Chairman of the division of surgery at the Hospital from 1970 to 1974. In addition to his heavy professional teaching and research commitments he was for a time a member of the Melbourne Legacy, an elder of the Uniting Church in Victoria and chairman of the Christian Medical Fellowship. He married Helen Gladys Eggleston in 1940 and there were three daughters and one son of the marriage. After retiring from practice in 1974 he continued to enjoy his hobby of gardening and frequently visited the Melbourne Club. He died in 1987 survived by his wife and four children.