Born at Melbourne, Victoria on 21 June 1898, the third child and second son of Siegfried Lazarus, importer, and his wife and cousin Regina. Lazarus was educated at Melbourne Grammar School, and after graduating at the University of Melbourne came to England. Here he acted as resident medical officer at the Hackney Hospital, 1927, was house surgeon and resident surgical officer at All Saints' Hospital, 1929, at St Peter's Hospital, 1930, and surgeon to the Dudley Road Hospital, Birmingham, 1931. Returning to Australia he was successively surgical clinical assistant to the Melbourne Hospital, 1932, and out-patient surgeon at St Vincent's Hospital. During the war he served as a driver in an Australian horse battery in France from 1916 to 1919. He practised at 2 Collins Street, Melbourne after the war, specializing in genito-urinary surgery, and died of poliomyelitis on 11 August 1937 during a widespread epidemic. He was survived by his wife, Frances Done Bodman, whom he married in December 1927. Lazarus was a distinct loss to Australian surgery on account both of his surgical ability and his personality. He had trained himself professionally in the English school of medicine and had acquired a sound knowledge of his Australian fellow countrymen by prolonged service in the ranks. His untimely death cut short a career which promised to be unusually brilliant.