Patrick Herbert Lyon Playfair was an obstetrician and gynaecologist in South Africa. He was born on 15 September 1903 in Hampshire. He gained his MRCS LRCP in 1928 and became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1933. He practised in South Africa. Outside medicine, his main interests were farming and sailing. He had two children, Gavin Seamus and Suzannah, by his second marriage to Esme Mary Madeleine Playfair née Fitzgerald, who was originally from Ireland. He died in 1986 in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.