Drogo Austin was born in Colombo, Ceylon on 17 October 1910, the son of Lester Austin, a banker in the National Bank of India who claimed descent from the Commissar General of the British Army which had captured Ceylon from the Dutch. His mother was Ethel Elfreda, née Nicolle. He was educated at Royal College, Colombo and entered Ceylon Medical College in 1929. He qualified in 1935 with first class honours, joined the department of medical and sanitary services and served in junior posts in the General Hospital, Colombo, as well as in Galle, Trincomalee and Jaffna. He was also a demonstrator in pathology and district medical assistant. In 1945 he came to England for postgraduate study under Grey Turner, Ian Aird, Sir James Paterson Ross and Sir Reginald Watson-Jones, and passed the FRCS in 1948. On returning to Ceylon he was resident surgeon, assistant surgeon to the orthopaedic clinic and finally consultant surgeon to the General Hospital, Colombo, in 1951. A meticulous and conscientious surgeon and a popular teacher, he examined for the MB BS and MS degrees and was President of the Ceylon College of Surgeons and the Sri Lanka Medical Association. Austin retired form surgical practice in 1970, and was elected an honorary Fellow of the Sri Lanka College of Surgeons in 1971. In 1975 he took up a position as orthopaedic consultant to the John F Kennedy Memorial Medical Centre in Monrovia, Liberia. There he remained for nine years, and was awarded the honorary Fellowship of the West African College of Surgeons. Outside surgery, Austin was particularly interested in wild life conservation, and was Vice-President of the Wild Life and Fauna Protection Society until 1975. He had a great interest in photography and often entertained guests at his home with a display of slides of leopards, deer, elephants and bears which he had 'shot' with his camera. He was a keen angler and an enthusiastic cook, often producing excellent meals while out on jungle safari trips. He married Alice Eleanor (Nora) Loos in 1936, and they had a son, Nigel, and two daughters. Austin died on 28 June 1991 aged eighty, having undergone an oesophagectomy for cancer a few months earlier.