Harold James Ross was born in Rothienorman, Aberdeenshire, and was educated at Inverurie Academy and Robert Gordon's College, Aberdeen. He graduated in medicine from Aberdeen University in 1932 after a distinguished undergraduate career and obtained the FRCS in 1937. Subsequently he worked in various London hospitals and at the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica. During the second world war he served in the United Kingdom as an ear, nose and throat surgical specialist, and thereafter he acted as a ship's surgeon on the Cunard and Union Castle lines. Ross retired in the early 1960s for health reasons and spent most of his retirement in Cults, Aberdeen. He was unmarried. He died on 4 November, aged 79 years.