Ascroft was born on 4 September 1906, the only son of James Arthur Ascroft of Bootle, Lancashire and Hannah Byers of Culton, Cumberland. He was educated at Worksop, the Middlesex Hospital, and the University of Strasbourg, qualifying in 1930; the next year he gained the gold medal at his Master of Surgery Degree at the University of London. At the Middlesex Hospital he was a senior Broderip Scholar and later held various resident appointments, including that of assistant in the Bland Sutton Institute of Pathology. In 1933 he was house surgeon in the department of neuro-surgery at the London Hospital under Hugh Cairns, but returned to the Middlesex in 1934 as a surgical registrar and became assistant surgeon in 1937. Meanwhile he had been elected to a Rockefeller Travelling Fellowship in neuro-surgery, and was also Streatfield Research Scholar (1937), Hunterian Professor (1938), and Leverhulme Research Scholar (1946) at the Royal College of Surgeons. During the second world war he served as Lieutenant-Colonel RAMC in the Middle East, and was adviser in neuro-surgery in the Mediterranean in 1944-45. He was awarded the MBE in 1942. His most valuable work during the war was on head injuries in the Western Desert. After the war Ascroft was the obvious choice for the newly established Chair of Surgery at the Middlesex and he relinquished his special interest in neuro-surgery. However it gradually became evident that some of his old zest and enthusiasm had gone under the strain of war, and in 1952 he gave up his chair at the Middlesex. With great courage he continued for a time to engage in surgical research but eventually this also had to go. In all his vicissitudes Peter Ascroft remained a man of great personal charm, and his friends felt sad that such a brilliant promise never really achieved its fulfilment. Ascroft died at his home at Teddington, Middlesex on 27 October 1965, aged 59. Publications: Traumatic epilepsy after gunshot wounds of the head. *Brit med J* 1941, 1, 739-44. Treatment of head wounds due to missiles; analysis of 500 cases of head wounds. *Lancet* 1943, 2, 211-8.