Andrew Rugg-Gunn was born on 26 November 1884 at Altandhu, Ross and Cromarty, in north-west Scotland, the eldest of the five children of John Douglas Gunn, a school-master, and Mary Maclean his wife. He was educated and graduated in medicine from the University of Edinburgh in 1907. He then went into general practice at Lochbroom. He had already begun to specialise in ophthalmology when the first world war broke out in August 1914. He was commissioned in the RAMC, but was evacuated with typhoid from the Gallipoli campaign in 1915; when he recovered he was posted to India, as an ophthalmic specialist with the 16th Indian Division. After the war he settled in London, made postgraduate study at St Bartholomew's, and was appointed to the staff at the Western Ophthalmic Hospital, the Central Middlesex and Metropolitan Ear, Nose and Throat Hospitals, and at the Cripples Training Centre at Stanmore. He took the Fellowship in 1925. Rugg-Gunn was active in several societies, particularly the Chelsea Clinical Society, of which he was secretary and then President, the Hunterian Society, the Medico-Legal Society, and the Medical Society of London. He served on the Council of British Ophthalmologists and on the Council of the Section of Ophthalmology in the Royal Society of Medicine. Rugg-Gunn was a skilful maker and user of instruments: he designed a binocular ophthalmoscope and was a pioneer in prescribing contact lenses. He wrote often in the ophthalmic journals, especially on retinal detachment, and published a useful textbook, *Diseases of the eye* in 1933. Outside his profession his chief interest was in Scandinavian antiquities, and he travelled widely in Europe and Asia. He was President 1934-36 of the Viking Society for Northern Research, and published his, the *Osiris and Odin origin of kingship* in 1940. He was a keen mountaineer, and in later life took up gardening. Rugg-Gunn was married to Gertrude Smith in 1906, and following her death, to Cecilia Mary Graham-Wells in 1938. He died on 1 September 1972 aged eighty-seven, after suffering for some years from severe arterio-sclerosis. He was survived by his wife, and by the daughter and two sons of his first marriage; one son, Mark Andrew Rugg-Gunn, became FRCP, and a granddaughter and her husband were both medically qualified. Publications: Data concerning radiation and protective glasses with a note on retinoscopes. *Brit J Ophthal* 1934, 18, 65. A case of recurrent aphthous uveitis with associated ulcus vulvae acutum (Lipschutz). *Brit J Ophthal* 1947, 31, 396.