Born at Llechwyd Farm, Towyn on 27 September 1874, the second child of John Rowlands, farmer, and Elizabeth Pugh, his wife. His parents died when he was five years old and his upbringing was supervised by trustees and his elder brother, Richard Pugh Rowlands. He was educated at Dolgelly Grammar School and at Guy's Hospital. He soon distinguished himself in the Medical School by gaining prizes in anatomy and the medals for medicine and surgery. At the University of London he won the exhibition and gold medal in medicine, and qualified for the gold medal at the examination for the Mastership in Surgery. He served as house surgeon and was appointed demonstrator of anatomy at Guy's in 1899, and filled the post of surgical registrar. On 16 April 1906 he was elected assistant surgeon to the Hospital on the retirement of R Clement Lucas, and was given charge of the orthopaedic department; in July 1918 he succeeded L A Dunn as surgeon and was then appointed lecturer on surgery, a post he held for a year, when lectures on systematic surgery were abolished and the appointment lapsed. He was also surgeon for a time to the East London (Princess Elizabeth of York) Hospital for Children at Shadwell. During the war he was surgeon to the 2nd London General Hospital, with the rank of captain, RAMC(T), and was consulting surgeon to the Russian Hospital and to the Sussex Lodge Hospital. For his services he was decorated OBE. At the Royal College of Surgeons he was elected a member of the Council in 1922 and was senior vice-president at the time of his death. In 1929 he delivered the Bradshaw lecture, in which he reviewed the surgery of the gall-bladder and bile ducts. He married on 12 September 1905 Alice Maude, third daughter of Edward Piper of Bodiam Manor, Sussex, who survived him with a son and a daughter. He died instantaneously and without previously showing any signs of illness at his house 45 Wimpole Street, W1, on 7 December 1933. Rowlands presented in a remarkable degree the qualities of his race, friendliness, generosity, and a love of all forms of outdoor sport. By heredity a farmer, he had an uncanny knowledge of cattle; passing a herd he could recognize the individual beasts months afterwards and he could appraise their weight most accurately. He was an admirable teacher of surgery, and exercised a profound influence for good upon the students who came under him. In Council and committees he was never foremost in speaking, but when he intervened at the end of a meeting with his soft voice and slight Welsh accent it was usually found that he had summed up correctly the general sense of the speakers. As a surgeon he ranked high among the pioneers of the surgery of the liver and gall bladder, proving himself a skillful operator. Publications: He edited the fifth (1907), the sixth (1915) and the seventh (1927) editions of Jacobson's *Operations of surgery*. Carcinoma of the colon. *Brit med J* 1927, 1, 95. Surgery of gall-bladder and bile-ducts, Bradshaw lecture, RCS. *Lancet*, 1929, 2, 1075. Surgical treatment of diseases of the gall-bladder and bile-ducts. *Brit med J* 1932, 1, 643.