J H Conyers was born in British Guiana on 4 August 1906, son of the Surgeon-General. After leaving Cheltenham he received his university education at Cambridge where he obtained a BA honours degree in Natural Science in 1927 and an MA in November 1934. He completed his medical training at St Thomas's Hospital, London, where he qualified MRCS, LRCP in April and MB, Bchir Cantab in December 1930. In December 1932 he obtained the FRCS. After qualification he worked until April 1936 at St Thomas's Hospital, where he gained a wide experience in surgery, as casualty officer and then house surgeon to Sir Percy Sargent and B C Maybury on the Surgical Unit, senior casualty officer and house surgeon to the septic wards, demonstrator and lecturer in anatomy, and later surgical registrar and tutor in clinical and operative surgery. Following the custom of the time and the rules prevailing over hospital appointments in York he entered general practice there in 1936, and in 1937 was appointed honorary assistant surgeon to the York County Hospital. At the inception of the National Health Service in 1948 he became a consulting surgeon to the York group of hospitals and continued in active surgical practice until his final illness made it impossible for him to continue his work. He was a man of magnetic charm, with a quiet but strong personality which attracted friends wherever he went. Senior and junior colleagues, nurses and patients alike were devoted to him; his dry humour impressed all who knew him. He made a major contribution in gastric surgery to the Leeds -York peptic ulcer research. He was a keen member of the Grey Turner Surgical Club and of the Gastroenterology Society. In his younger days he had been a good athlete and excelled particularly at tennis and ski-ing and in later years became a keen golfer. He was a voracious reader especially of medical and historical biographies and was always interested and amused by the oddities of human nature. He died in June 1970 following an operation, and was survived by his wife and three sons, one of whom is in the medical profession.