Sir John Croot was born on 14 October, 1907, in Portsmouth, the son of Horace Croot, LDS, RCS, a dental surgeon in Southsea, and Emily Winifred, née Daw. He was educated at Eastman's School, Southsea, and then at Haileybury College, Hertford, from 1921 to 1925, where he was a senior scholar. He trained at Guy's Hospital, where he qualified with the Conjoint Diploma and the London degree in 1930. After two years' house appointments at Guy's as house surgeon and out-patient officer under R P Rowlands and Launcelot Bromley he went into practice in Hong Kong. He returned to Britain to specialise in surgery and took the FRCS in 1938. On the outbreak of war he joined the RAMC, serving in the UK from 1940 to 1942 and India and Burma, 1942 to 1946. He reached the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, and was mentioned in dispatches in 1944 for his work with the 14th Army. After the war he joined Professor Milnes Walker as senior lecturer in the University Department of Surgery at Bristol, from which he was appointed in 1951 to the new Chair of Surgery at the University College of East Africa in Kampala, Uganda. He was an excellent organiser, a careful surgeon and a good teacher. In 1955 he was appointed to the legislative council of Uganda, and when that body was reconstituted in 1958 he was asked to become Minister of Health and Labour in the new government. He was President of the Association of Surgeons of East Africa in 1956 and 1962. In 1961, at Uganda's independence, he returned to clinical practice as senior consultant surgeon in the health service at Mulago Hospital. His work in East Africa was recognised by the award of the CBE in 1963 and a knighthood in 1965. In 1969 he retired from active practice and returned to the United Kingdom where he became a member of the Pensions Appeal Tribunals for England and Wales in 1970 and also medical chairman of the tribunals. In 1955 he married Linda Burley. There were no children. He died on 22 May 1981.