Thomas Boyd was born in Glasgow on 7 June 1918, the son of Harold Arthur Boyd and his wife Edith, née Somerville. He was educated at Glasgow Academy. His father was chairman and director of the family engineering business, J & T Boyd Ltd., and Thomas went through an engineering apprenticeship from 1935 to 1937. He then took the decision to enter medicine and was accepted at Glasgow University Medical School, qualifying in 1942. After rotating internships in Glasgow and Stirling he joined the RAMC in 1943 as a general duty medical officer. He soon took up a traineeship and subsequently qualified as graded ophthalmologist, serving in military hospitals in Belgium, Germany, Tripolitania, Palestine and Cyprus. On demobilisation he continued his specialist training, taking his FRCS in 1954. He was appointed consultant ophthalmologist in Bangour the following year, but after three years decided to move to Edmonton, Canada, taking his CRCS(C) in 1959, and FRCS(Canada) in 1973. Between 1962 and 1974 he gained over thirty research grants, and his energetic research projects resulted in over forty publications, chiefly in the *Canadian journal of ophthalmology* and the *Transactions of the Canadian Ophthalmic Society*. In 1942 he married Miss K M Struthers and they had two sons, one of whom predeceased him, and two daughters. He died in 1993.