Humphrey Neame was born on 8 May 1887 and went to school at Cheltenham College; he was President of the Cheltonian Society in 1951-52. He did his undergraduate course at the London Hospital, and after qualifying with the Conjoint Diploma in 1910 he spent a year in Serbia at the time of the Balkan war as resident surgeon in the Military Hospital at Kragujevač. He held appointments at the London and at Poplar Hospital and took the Fellowship in 1913. Then came the first world war in which he served with the RAMC and was awarded the Croix-de-Guerre. After the war he decided to specialize in ophthalmology, and, in addition to appointments as registrar and pathologist at the London Hospital, he joined the staff of the Central London Ophthalmic Hospital, which is now the Institute of Ophthalmology, and somewhat later became pathologist at Moorfields Eye Hospital. In 1926 he was appointed to the surgical staff of Moorfields, on which he served till 1947. In 1923 he was made honorary ophthalmic surgeon to University College Hospital and worked there till his retirement in 1952 at the age of 65. He might have continued to practise after retiring from hospital work had it not been for failing health, and for this reason he went to live in the country, at West Hendred on the north slope of the Berkshire Downs, near Wantage, where he was able to enjoy his garden in peace. In his time he played a leading part in his specialty, having been secretary of the Section of Ophthalmology at the Annual Meeting of the British Medical Association in 1924, and in 1953-54 he was President of the Section of Ophthalmology of the Royal Society of Medicine. In his writing, both in articles in the journals and in text books, notably *A handbook of ophthalmology* which was compiled jointly with Williamson-Noble, and also in frequent contributions to discussions at ophthalmological meetings he emphasised the medical as well as the surgical aspects of his subject. Humphrey Neame was married twice. In 1924 he married Minnie Gordon Skirving who died tragically after a car accident in 1932, leaving two small sons. In 1938 he married Elizabeth Monroe, a distinguished historian and economist, and she with his sons survived him when he died on 25 July 1968, after a long illness, at the age of 81.