John Mander, a former consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist at York District Hospital, was born in Sheffield on 5 August 1924. His father, Thomas Goddard Mander, was a solicitor, and his mother, Edith Alice Ruth née Bland, a Montessori teacher. Her father had been a draper. John Mander was educated at the Dean Close School, Cheltenham, where he was an exhibitioner, and gained a scholarship to Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He went to University College Hospital for his clinical training and qualified in 1948. After junior appointments at UCH and Edgware, he did his National Service in the RNVR from 1949 to 1951. On returning to the North Middlesex Hospital, he decided to specialise in obstetrics and became obstetric senior house officer at the Whittington Hospital, and thereafter held a series of appointments at Queen Charlotte's, the Soho Hospital for Women, St Thomas's and the Royal Marsden Hospital. He was appointed as a consultant to York District Hospital. In 1951, he married Mary Josephine Clifford, an anaesthetist, and had two daughters, Jane and Maria, and two sons, Philip and James, one of whom became a doctor. There are seven grandchildren. He died in his sleep on 7 February 1999.