Robert Gerrett Reid, the son of the Rev Dr James Reid, DD, a Presbyterian Minister and well-known preacher, and of Isa Reid (née Gerrett), a school mistress, was born at Oban, Scotland, on 21 September 1909. He was educated at Roborough School, Eastbourne, the Leys School, Cambridge, and Guy's Hospital Medical School. On graduating in 1932 he held various house appointments at Guy's and elsewhere and, after a period as a ship's doctor, he settled in general practice in Reading and was appointed honorary surgeon to the Royal Berkshire Hospital. During the second world war he joined the RAMC as a surgical specialist, serving in Algeria, Sicily and Italy with the First Army and subsequently becoming a keen member of the First Army Travelling Surgeons' Club. He returned to Reading after the war and gave up general practice in 1947, becoming consultant general surgeon there at the inception of the NHS in 1948. He there established a reputation as a true generalist. Calm, tolerant and well-mannered, he was a conscientious and tireless worker and a wise counsellor. During a period of change and expansion of the hospital service he served as chairman of the surgical department, and was onetime President of the Reading Pathological Society. On retiring from hospital practice in 1974 he moved to the Kennet valley where he established a beautiful garden and arboretum of which he was justifiably proud. He was widely read with a retentive memory and a fund of information on many subjects, clinical, classical and Shakespearian. He was an accomplished musician and enjoyed many sporting activities, including golf, skiing and fly fishing. Relatively late in life, in 1961, he had married a journalist widow, Mrs Morag Williams (née Forster), and there were no children. When he died on 21 October 1987, after a protracted illness, he was survived by his wife.