Earl Ming-Teh Lu was a consultant surgeon for over 40 years at the Mount Alvernia, Mount Elizabeth and Gleneagles Hospitals in Singapore. A talented artist, he was considered one of Singapore’s most prominent art patrons and philanthropists. Born in Hong Kong on 15 September 1925, he was the fourth child and only son of Shou Cheng Lu, a bank manager, and his wife Tong Kit Heng. He led a peripatetic childhood living in Hong Kong, Malaysia, China (Shanghai) and Singapore where he attended St Andrew’s School from 1938 to 1942. In the aftermath of the second world war the family fled Singapore by boat two weeks before it fell to the Japanese. They arrived in India and there he sat his O-levels before travelling on to Australia. He graduated MB BS at Sydney University in 1951 and was a houseman at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. From 1952 to 1955 he trained in chest surgery at the North Shore Hospital under Ian Monk. He completed his training in general surgery with Ghim Seng Yeoh when he returned to Singapore in 1958. After passing the college fellowship and that of the Edinburgh college in 1960, he commenced practice the following year as a consultant surgeon at the Mount Alvernia, Mount Elizabeth and Gleneagles Hospitals. In 1963 he also entered private practice in partnership with Professor Yeoh. A volunteer army surgeon in a field hospital in Singapore from 1974, he left the service with the rank of lieutenant colonel in 1993. In April 2001 he retired after forty years as a consultant and part time surgical tutor, having remarked to his son in his later years that he enjoyed surgery so much that he would gladly pay to have the privilege to operate. Lu’s other great love (and skill) was painting and his rose paintings can be found hanging on the walls of several hospitals and famous medical institutions. From his father and grandfather he had inherited a knowledge and love for Chinese brush painting and porcelain and he began collecting even as an impoverished medical student. He was later to say “All collectors are mad. And I’ve collected with overdraft all my life.” Most of his collections he generously donated to various museums, notably a valuable 200 piece collection of Southeast Asian pottery dating from the 9th-15th centuries which he gave to the Singapore Art Museum in the 1990’s. As an art lover he regarded himself merely as holding valuable works in trust and was once heard to say “The piece is over a thousand years old. We are only it’s custodians for a brief period of time.” Founding chairman of the museum from 1994 to 2000, he was appointed a Justice of the Peace in 1989 and received the Public Star Award from the President in 1995. While a medical student in Sydney he met his wife, Norma Phyllis Yin, who was a Chinese Australian. They had four sons, Mark, Paul, Peter and Stephen. An avid reader, especially of poetry and philosophy, he also enjoyed good food (especially Chinese delicacies) and was a strong admirer of Hinduism. Norma predeceased him in 2004 and he fell ill and died in Pisa on a painting trip to Italy, just thirteen days short of his eightieth birthday. He was survived by his sons and grandchildren, Shawn, Anne Marie, James, Ellen and Timothy.