Born at Wandsworth, London, on 7 February 1859, the second son and second child of John Charles Buckmaster, JP and Emily Ann Goodliffe, his wife. His father, who was in the Science and Art department at South Kensington, was one of the pioneers as a departmental lecturer. The family achieved a distinguished record. The eldest son was an assistant master at Magdalen College School, Oxford; the third son, Sidney, became Lord High Chancellor of England, and was created Viscount Buckmaster of Cheddington; the fourth son, C A Buckmaster, was chief inspector under the Board of Education; the fifth, Martin A Buckmaster, principal examiner under the Board of Education, was well known as an authority on architecture and as an artist. George Buckmaster was educated under his eldest brother at Magdalen College School and matriculated at the University of Oxford on 16 October 1877 as a Demy of Magdalen College. He graduated BA with first-class honours in the school of natural science in 1881, gained the Burdett Coutts university scholarship in geology in 1882, and was awarded the Radcliffe travelling Fellowship in 1883. As Radcliffe travelling Fellow he did research work in physiology in the laboratories at Leipzig, Kiel, Gottingen, and Berlin. He received his medical education at St George's Hospital where he continued his research work until 1900, when he went to India as a member of the commission appointed to investigate leprosy. In 1904 he succeeded Henry Power, FRCS as professor of physiology at the Royal Veterinary College and became assistant professor of physiology at University College, London. In 1919 he was elected professor of physiology in Bristol University in succession to Stanley Kent, and held office until 1929. He was for many years an examiner in physiology at the Royal College of Surgeons and in that capacity had visited India, New Zealand, and Australia, with William Wright, FRCS as his colleague. The secretary of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons recorded "the sorrow felt in Australia and New Zealand at his death", in a letter to the *Brit med J*. 1938, 1, 650. He married Amy Elizabeth Brooks, daughter of Charles Brooks of Milton Green, Cheshire on 14 August 1889 at Worsley Parish Church, Lancs. She survived him with a son and a daughter. He died after an attack which left him aphasic on 21 December 1937 at 6 Victoria Square, Clifton, Bristol. Buckmaster had much of the family talent and good looks. He was an excellent conversationalist, a first-rate teller of stories, and a great friend. His memory was prodigious and he had an extensive acquaintance with the general literature of his day. Scientifically he was especially interested in the morphology of the blood, more particularly in connexion with the vexed question of the origin and nature of blood platelets, and in the blood gases in anaesthesia.