Rollin Arthur Burn was a consultant ophthalmic surgeon at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington. He was born in Newcastle on 26 September 1916, and was educated at Haileybury, Hertfordshire. He returned to Newcastle for his medical training at Durham University. He stayed in Newcastle for his ophthalmic training as a registrar and a senior registrar, and then moved to London, where he was a consultant ophthalmic surgeon at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, from 1962 to 1984. He was a member of the Ophthalmic Society of the UK. He wrote papers on ophthalmic anaesthesia, lachrymal surgery and mercurialentis, and assisted Arnold Sorsby in his work on retinitis pigmentosa. During the war he served in India and Burma. He married Mary Fawcett, an artist from Riding Mill, Northumberland, and they had three sons - the eldest now an engineer, the second a ship builder, and the youngest a doctor in Canada. He was a keen sailor and initially sailed on the Thames and the Medway with his three sons and in retirement on the North Sea. In retirement he lived in Little Bealings in Suffolk and sadly died of Alzheimer's disease on 11 May 2001. He was survived by Mary, their sons, Michael, Julian and Robert and grandchildren, Rosamund, Theodore, Christopher and Frances.