Anthony George Ackerley was a consultant pathologist in Leicester. Born in Wolstanton, Staffordshire on 3 February 1925, he was the only child of George Ackerley, a schoolmaster and his wife Ethel née Edge. She was the daughter of Andrew Edge, a shoemaker who was to become Burgess of the Borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme. After attending Watlands Infant School and Ellison Street Junior School in Wolstanton he finished his education at Newcastle-under-Lyme High School for boys which he attended from 1935 to 1943. He went up to Emmanuel College Cambridge with a scholarship and graduated MB BChir in 1950. Having obtained a Burney Yeo scholarship he trained at King’s College Hospital where he was house surgeon in ENT from 1949 to 1950, house pathologist the following year and then demonstrator in anatomy at Cambridge. Among surgeons who particularly mentored him during these years were Sir Victor Negus, Terence Cawthorne, Henry Harris and W M Davidson. For his National Service he served in the RAMC from 1951 to 1953 as an ENT specialist at Millbank Military Hospital. On demobilisation he became a junior assistant pathologist at Addenbrooke’s Hospital and passed the fellowship of the college in 1954. Moving to Sheffield in 1956 he worked as a senior registrar in pathology until 1961 when he became a consultant pathologist in Leicester. At the Leicester School of Speech Therapy he was also a visiting lecturer in anatomy and physiology. As a student at Cambridge he won his college colours for rugby and cricket and continued on to play for King’s when he lived in London. On 24 January 1953 he married Sylvia Woodbridge who was also a qualified doctor and they had four sons the eldest of whom took up medicine. He died in February 1997.