Lloyd Woodrow Cox was professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Adelaide University. Born on 4 July 1919 in Auckland, New Zealand, he was christened Lloyd after Lloyd George and Woodrow after Woodrow Wilson. His father, Edwin Thoms Cox, was a Methodist minister who eventually settled in a parish in Dunedin. Mayor during the depression years, he made a point of ensuring that the unemployed were given meaningful work. Cox’s mother, Winifred Mary née Hudson, was an artist whose father was also a clergyman. He attended Otago Boys High School in Dunedin and then Otago University Medical School where he won medals in medicine and obstetrics. After a residency at Dunedin Hospital, he won a travelling scholarship in obstetrics in 1946 and spent the first six months at the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne. The remaining time he spent in the UK at the Soho and Samaritan Women’s Hospitals in London. After passing the fellowship in 1947 and the MRCOG in 1948, he moved to Liverpool to continue his training at the Liverpool Maternity Hospital. In Liverpool he worked with Charles McIntosh Marshall, a fellow New Zealander and Sir Norman Jeffcoate, who was later to become president of the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. On returning to New Zealand in 1952 he took up the post of visiting specialist at Dunedin Hospital and senior lecturer at Otago University. While there he founded the Dunedin Hospital Infertility Clinic in 1955. In 1958 he moved to Adelaide, South Australia having been appointed foundation chair of obstetrics and gynaecology at the university. He inaugurated the department of obstetrics and gynaecology at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and set about recruiting fellow clinicians and academics. In the 25 years he was to spend in post he played a major part in teaching, policy making and promoting scientific research. From the value that he placed on the close relationship between science and medicine came the founding of Australia’s first frozen semen bank in 1971 at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. His unit carried out pioneering research on such topics as cervical cancer aetiology and treatment. Fertility research carried out by them eventually resulted in the second IVF pregnancy in 1981. He took part in numerous committees both for the university and nationally. Among many important roles he was dean of the faculty of medicine from 1963-1965, national president of the Family Planning Association of Australia, president from 1975 to 1978 of the Australian Council of the RCOG and inaugural president of the RACOG from 1978 to 1979. In 1981 he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for services to women’s health. When he retired in 1984 after 26 years of service, Adelaide University held an international scientific meeting at the medical school. Over 150 scientists attended to discuss the progress of 30 years in his control over most aspects of reproduction and the possibilities for the future. After retirement he set up a private practice in North Terrace which he ran for 2 years from 1985 to 1987. When he was training in Melbourne in 1946, he met his future wife, Margaret (Brownie) Mckecknie who was a midwife. She followed him to the UK three years later to work at the Liverpool Children’s Hospital and they married in 1950. They had a daughter, Diana, who qualified in medicine and a son, David. He played squash when young and all his life he enjoyed tennis and water skiing with family and friends on the Murray River. In retirement he joined the Royal Adelaide Golf Club and, in spite of suffering from Alhzeimer’s, continued to play until three weeks before his death. He died on 28 December 2001 aged 82, survived by his wife, children and two grandchildren.