James McCunn was born on 29 December 1894 and had a distinguished student career at the Royal Veterinary College, London, qualifying MRCVS in 1919. Shortly after the first world war he took the medical course at the London Hospital and the Conjoint Diploma in 1924. He then worked for two years in the pathology department of the London Hospital, and in 1926 went to the Lister Institute to do research into foot and mouth disease. As his real interest lay in veterinary science he returned to the Royal Veterinary College later in the same year as Professor of Veterinary Anatomy, and remained in that department until his retirement in 1962. In 1954 he was appointed acting Principal of the College and in 1955 Vice-Principal continuing in that post until he retired. A noteworthy feature of his work was the links he established between medicine and veterinary science, and it was therefore most appropriate that he should be elected in 1955 to the presidency of the section of comparative medicine of the Royal Society of Medicine, and to the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons. His election in 1962 to the honorary fellowship of the Hunterian Society was a distinction shared by only one other veterinary surgeon, Sir Frederick Hobday. James McCunn died suddenly at his home in Chingford, Essex, on 2 April 1967.