Alan William Douglas was born on 23 October 1910 in Napier, New Zealand. He was educated at Napier Boys High School and Otago University, where he graduated MB ChB in 1933. Resident posts in Auckland preceded his arrival in England in 1934 when he became surgical registrar at Queen Mary's Hospital for the East End and the Royal Sussex County Hospital where he met his future wife, Joyce. He became FRCS in 1938 and married in 1941, the year in which he joined the RAMC before being transferred to the New Zealand Medical Corps in which he served in the Middle East and Italy until the end of the war. On his return to New Zealand, he worked at Wellington Hospital for a year before being appointed to the staff of Palmerston North Hospital, where he remained until he retired in 1979. He became widely known and respected for his professional competence and integrity and he had the distinction of serving as Chairman of the New Zealand Committee of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, the first provincial surgeon to do so. He examined in the FRACS examination for many years and in an address to mark the first half century of the College in New Zealand, Doctor David Cole said of him '…in this decade (1959-67) it is Alan Douglas who illustrates the solid rock of good surgery practised away from the main centre'. He served as secretary of the Manawatu Division of the New Zealand Medical Association for several years, later becoming its Chairman and in 1971 he was elected President of the NZMA. His leisure hours were spent reading or with his family at Hatepe on Lake Taupo, swimming, fishing or observing the wild life in the forests. After he retired he was sought as a consultant surgeon until his death in Tauranga on 21 February 1982. His wife, two sons, daughter and eight grandchildren survived him.