Arthur Robertson Makey was a consultant general and cardiothoracic surgeon at Charing Cross Hospital, London. He was born on 3 June 1922 in Dover, Kent, the son of Arthur Frank Makey, a corn chandler and seedman, and Lily Makey née Findlay, a tailoress. He was educated at Dover Grammar School and then gained Kent County and Kitchener scholarships to study medicine at King’s College, London and Charing Cross Hospital Medical School. He qualified in 1945. After pre-registration house posts, he joined the RAF as a medical officer in Bombay and Karachi. Following his demobilisation, he returned to London and continued his surgical training at the Charing Cross and Brompton hospitals. At the Brompton he worked with Bill Cleland, the pioneer of open-heart surgery. In 1955, he was appointed to the consultant staff of Charing Cross Hospital and subsequently also held posts at Colindale and the RAF Hospital at Midhurst, with the honorary rank of air commodore. He was an enthusiastic teacher. He was an examiner in surgery for the University of London from 1964 to 1976 and a member of the court of examiners at the Royal College of Surgeons from 1974 to 1980 (chairman in 1980). Arthur was a meticulous, modest and cool-headed surgeon. He was unusual in that despite his cardiothoracic work he continued to take on a general surgical commitment, however it was the lung work that he liked the best. After medicine, his main passion was golf, which he approached in his usual meticulous and academic way. He became a member of the Royal Mid-Surrey Golf Club, becoming captain in 1995. He was known in the club as ‘the professor’. In 1947, he married Patricia Mary Cummings, a nurse, in Bombay. They had three children – David Arthur (a surgeon in the USA), Margaret Anne and John Andrew – and six grandchildren, three of whom have followed him into medicine. Arthur Makey died from Alzheimer’s disease on 25 January 2018. He was 95.