Fisher received his medical education at the Westminster Hospital Medical School and qualified both with the London MB BS and the conjoint diploma in 1952. Deciding to specialise in ophthalmology after qualifying, he held junior appointments at the Westminster Hospital and at Moorfields. He won the Research Prize and the Treacher Collins Prize of the Royal Society of Medicine and his distinguished academic career took him to be consultant surgeon at the Western Ophthalmic Hospital and to the professorship of biophysics and ophthalmology at St Mary's Hospital and the Institute of Ophthalmology. He wrote a number of papers on cataract and the properties of basement membranes. He died on 9 December 1994, survived by his wife Barbara, a son, William, and daughter Janet. A thanksgiving and memorial service was held at Purley Baptist Church on 19 December 1994.