Arthur Eisdell Moore, the second son of John Ernest Moore, a company director, and of Margaret Elizabeth (née Titley) was born at Auckland, New Zealand, on 12 October 1889. He was educated at Mount Eden State School, Auckland, and Auckland Grammar School before entering Auckland University College. He then moved to Edinburgh where he won class medals in anatomy and the Miles Surgical Prize. After graduation he was house physician and house surgeon at East London Children's Hospital, and then house surgeon and house physician at the Great Northern (later Royal Northern) Hospital, London, before joining the RAMC during the first world war. He was surgeon to the Rawalpindi Hospital in France, in 1915, and with the same hospital in Mesopotamia before spending two years in the Army Orthopaedic Hospital at Southmead, Bristol, from 1917 to 1919. He later recorded his indebtedness to Wilfred Trotter, Gordon Gordon-Taylor and Ernest Hey Groves. On returning to Auckland he was appointed to the surgical staff at Auckland Hospital where he was senior surgeon for twenty years. He was examiner in surgery to the University of Otago. A keen rugby player in his early life, he continued with tennis until well into his seventies. His autobiography *Operation lifetime* was published by Collins in 1963. He married Alice Lofthouse in 1917 and they had two sons and a daughter. The elder son P W Eisdell Moore, FRCS, FRACS, is a consultant ENT surgeon in Auckland, and he has two sons who graduated in medicine. The death of Arthur Eisdell Moore at the age of 95 was reported by his elder son in July 1985.