Lester Reynold Dragstedt was born in Anaconda, Montana, of Swedish parents on 2 October 1893 and after his early schooling in that town he entered his medical training at the University of Chicago where he qualified in 1916. His main interest was in physiology, a subject in which he was appointed Assistant Professor in 1917, rapidly becoming an expert on gastric secretions. In 1923 he was made Professor of Physiology and Pharmacology in the North-Western University Medical School until 1925 when he joined Dr Phemister, then Professor of Surgery until 1959. Thereafter until his death he worked in Berne, Vienna and Budapest, but with his immense knowledge of physiology he became the leading figure in research and treatment of duodenal ulcer, finding that removal of the duodenum was compatible with life in 1918, isolating the hormone Lipocaic secreted by the pancreas in 1936 and establishing the value of vagotomy in 1943. He was a most successful and popular teacher, and a citation was given by Mr Norman Tanner when he received the Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1964. He married in 1922 and had four children, one of whom trained as a surgeon. He died on 16 July 1975.