Andrew Jowett was born in Sunderland in 1933, where his father, Ronald, an honorary FRCS, was an ENT surgeon and a member of the Newcastle Regional Hospital Board. Andrew was educated at Sedbergh School and St John's College, Cambridge, where he gained his BA in 1954. He subsequently went on to the London Hospital Medical School where he qualified in 1957, having won the Glenfield Harris surgery prize in his final year. After posts as house surgeon to the professorial unit at the London, house physician at the Ipswich and casualty officer at the Central Middlesex Hospital, he did his National Service in the RAMC from 1960 to 1962. This took him to Aldershot as medical officer to the Army PT School and the Cambridge Military Hospital, and he was involved with the Hurricane Relief Force in British Honduras. This was followed by a three year surgical registrar rotation in Leeds, an appointment as registrar to the thoracic unit at Leeds General Infirmary in 1965, and, in 1966, as senior registrar to the United Birmingham Hospitals. Here he worked with Professor Leigh Collis and Mr L D Abrams. He held this post until 1972, spending a year between 1969 and 1970 working as surgical, clinical and research assistant with Professor A Senning in Zurich. His research in Zurich was on the lymphatic drainage of the heart and how this was affected by cardiac surgical procedures, including transplantation. This work provided the basis for his Arris and Gale lecture in November 1971, entitled *Surgical implications of cardiac lymphatic drainage*. He was appointed consultant thoracic surgeon at Wolverhampton in 1972. This was a single-handed post covering all aspects of general thoracic surgery, and allowed him to develop his interest in oesophageal problems, stimulated originally in Leeds by John Aylwin and Leigh Collis, and augmented by a long association with a Hungarian surgeon, Joseph Imré, who shared this interest, their friendship having dated from the time Imré worked at Leeds with Geoffrey Wooler. He was a founder member of the British Oesophageal Group. In spite of being single-handed with a part share of a registrar, he and his clinical assistant were able, thanks to generous operating time, to provide an efficient and personalised service without a waiting list. He was also surgical tutor and postgraduate dean. A big, genial, pipe-smoking man, he was a compassionate doctor who took pride and pleasure in his work, caring for a widespread 'parish' that extended into mid-Wales, and maintaining an interest in oesophageal function and its assessment. Music was an important part of his life and at school he learned to play the oboe sufficiently well to join the National Youth Orchestra, whose forty year reunion he organised in retirement. After early retirement he made copies of baroque oboes, also enjoying photography and motor sport as a spectator. Having suffered from severe hypertension and an aortic aneurysm, he died of plasma cell dyscrasia on 21 September 1996. He was survived by his wife Ursula, née Jones, a nurse, and two sons, Robert and Gordon, neither of whom has entered the medical profession.