Born 18 December 1910, son of Edwin Albert Eden, MA, BSc, Head Master of Devizes Secondary School, who died at Letchworth in 1938, and of Monti Alston Christie, his wife. He was educated at his father's school and at University College, London, before entering University College Hospital Medical School, where he was Bucknill scholar and Cluff memorial prizeman in 1932. He won the Lister gold medal in surgery in 1933 and the Leslie Pearce Gould scholarship. With a travelling scholarship he worked in the surgical clinics of Berlin, Stockholm, Oslo, Copenhagen, and Paris. On his return to University College Hospital he was appointed Harker Smith cancer and radium registrar, assistant to Wilfred Trotter in the surgical unit, and John Marshall Fellow in surgi pathology. Eden edited the *UCH Magazine*, played association football for the hospital and took a full share in many undergraduate social activities. In 1939 he was appointed to the Emergency Medical Service neurological unit of University College Hospital at Hayward's Heath, Sussex and in 1941 he was appointed surgical registrar of the hospital. He collaborated with his master's son, W R Trotter, MRCP, in the hospital's thyroid clinic, and they made several important joint publications. In 1940 he was a Hunterian professor at the Royal College of Surgeons, lecturing on dumb-bell tumours of the spine. In spite of his great abilities, or perhaps because of an air of charming indolence, Eden, during this period, was looked upon as a capable rather than a brilliant surgeon. In April 1942 he was commissioned in the RAMC and served for four months at St Hugh's Military Hospital at Oxford. Eden found his métier when appointed leader of a neurosurgical unit in the Eighth Army, with the rank of major. He served all through the victorious North African campaign from Alamein to Tunis (winter 1942 to spring 1943). In the fast-moving tank battles of Tripolitania he found that head injuries were coming back to his station at the advance base too late for satisfactory intervention. He therefore split his unit into a base and a forward team, and himself went right forward to the battlefield. He converted a captured Italian motor-coach into a mobile operating theatre and worked in closest touch with the most forward casualty clearing station. He excised or closed the majority of head wounds within twenty-four hours of injury and achieved ninety per cent primary healing where the incidence of abscess had previously been very high. In the more favourable conditions of battle between Mareth and Tunis he made the most of his opportunities for forward area segregation of wounded. He had an exceptional capacity for operating continuously without sleep through long hours, and proved himself as fine a commander as a surgeon. His account of these war experiences with his surgical results was published posthumously in The Lancet. He went forward with the Eighth Army through the invasion of Sicily (summer 1943) into Italy, where he died of poliomyelitis at Naples on 21 October 1943. Eden married in 1936 Margaret Avis Jones, who survived him with a son and a daughter; his mother also outlived him. His widow married secondly James Carson, MD. He was a well-informed and cultivated man, with a good singing voice and a talent for drawing. Publications:- Case of lead encephalopathy. *Lancet*, 1935, 1, 490. Pseudotuberculoma silicoticum, with J Herbert-Burns. *Brit J Surg*. 1936-37, 24, 346. Dissemination of glioma of spinal cord in leptomeninges. *Brain*, 1938, 61, 398. Vascular complications of cervical ribs and first thoracic rib abnormalities. *Brit J Surg*. 1939-40, 27, 111. Benign fibro-osseous tumours of skull and facial bones. *Ibid* p 323. Dumb-bell tumours of the spine (Hunterian lectures). *Brit J Surg*. 1940-41, 28, 549. Xanthomatosis of skeleton in adult (bipoidosis of Schuller-Christian type), with E L G Hilton. *Lancet*, 1941, 1, 782. Plump type of Graves' disease, with W R Trotter. *Lancet*, 1941, 2, 335. Total thyroidectomy for heart failure, unusual case, with W R Trotter. *Brit Heart J*. 1941, 3, 200. Loss of consciousness in different types of head injury, with J W A Turner. *Proc Roy Soc Med*. 1940-41, 34, 685. Traumatic cerebrospinal rhinorrhoea: repair of fistula by transfrontal intradural operation. *Brit J Surg*. 1941-42, 29, 299. Case of lymphadenoid goitre associated with full clinical picture of Graves' disease, with W R Trotter. *Brit J Surg*. 1941-42, 29, 320. Lid retraction in toxic diffuse goitre, with W R Trotter. *Lancet*, 1942, 2, 385. Localized pretibial myxoedema in association with toxic goitre, with W R Trotter. *Quart J Med*. 1942, 11, 229. Mobile neurosurgery in warfare; experiences in the Eighth Army's campaign in Cyrenaica, Tripolitania and Tunisia. *Lancet*, 1943, 2, 689 and *Brit J Surg*. 1944, 31, 324.