Dudley Denham Pinnock was born in Australia in 1885 and received his medical education at the University of Melbourne where he graduated MB BS in 1908. After junior appointments in Australia he came to London for surgical training and took the Conjoint Diploma in 1911 and the FRCS in 1913. During the first world war he served with the RAMC in casualty clearing stations in France. When the war was over he obtained a surgical appointment to a children's hospital, but his most important post was as assistant surgeon to the National Temperance Hospital which he served till his retirement as senior surgeon in 1950. His practice was in general surgery, including gynaecology and orthopaedics, but although he distrusted specialization he knew his own limitations, his judgement was sound, and he served his patients well and with proper sympathetic understanding of their problems. In the second world war he was determined to return to the Army, and served with the first Army in North Africa with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in charge of a surgical division of a hospital in Algiers. It was towards the end of the war that his first wife, by whom he had two sons, died. Later he married again and in his retirement he and his second wife spent much of their time travelling and visiting various parts of the world together. He was a very friendly person, and when he died in a Bournemouth nursing home on 31 May 1965 he was sadly missed.