Leslie Frederick William Salmon, known as 'Sam', was a consultant otolaryngologist at Guy's Hospital. He was born on 10 December 1913, in Shepherd's Bush, London, where his father was a businessman. He was educated at Rutlish School and Guy's, where he won the Charles Oldham prize in ophthalmology. He was house surgeon at Guy's under T B Layton, Grant Massie, Davis-Colley and Russell Brock. He had joined the Territorial Army on leaving school, and, at the outbreak of the war, went with the RAMC to France and Belgium as a regimental medical officer, and was wounded at Dunkirk. Later he served in India, the Middle East and Sicily as deputy assistant director of medical services and later as assistant director of medical services in Italy, reaching the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He was mentioned in despatches and awarded the MBE in 1944. After the war, he returned to Guy's to specialise in otorhinolaryngology, spending a year at the Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York, where he learned the new Woodman operation for patients with paralysis of both vocal cords. He was appointed to the consultant staff of Guy's in 1952, and later to the Evelina Children's Hospital and St Helier's Hospital, Carshalton, where he became an expert in the surgery of the temporal bone. A man of great charm, an outstanding committee chairman, he had a knack of persuading people to adopt his views and believe they were their own. He was President of the British Association of Otolaryngologists from 1975 to 1978, and master of the sixth British Academic Conference in Otolaryngology. He was a member of the Visiting Association of Throat and Ear Surgeons of Great Britain, and advisory editor (ENT) to the International dictionary of medicine and biology. In 1970 the Commonwealth Foundation invited him to undertake annual visits to Malawi, and there, over the next 10 years, he helped train all grades of staff in the development of ENT services and helped establish a centre for deaf children at Nguludi. He married Maude ('Pip') King in 1940. They had a daughter and two sons. He died on 27 December 2002.