Albert Davis was an obstetrician and pioneering neuro-gynaecologist. He born on 4 January 1904 into a Jewish family in Manchester, where he studied medicine and became resident at the Manchester Royal Infirmary to Sir Harry Platt and Sir Geoffrey Jefferson, who greatly influenced him. He soon developed an interest in neurology and gynaecology. He was a Dickeson research scholar in the gynaecology research laboratory in Manchester, studying the innervation of the pelvis. He visited Cotte in Lyons, the founder of presacral neurectomy, and performed meticulous work on the cadaver, leading to an MD and a Hunterian professorship at the College. His lifelong concern was with chronic pelvic pain, which he treated with alcohol injection or open presacral neurectomy. After resident posts at Guy’s and Chelsea Hospitals, he was appointed as a consultant to Dulwich, St Giles, the London Jewish, Bearsted Maternity, the Prince of Wales and French Hospitals, and, after the war, King’s College Hospital. During the second world war, he was obstetrician to the south east London metropolitan sector, and later also to the north east sector. Here he honed his surgical skills, being able to perform a caesarian section in 20 seconds. In one day in Hackney he performed 11 of these operations in a single day. In 1950, together with Purdom Martin at Queen Square, he drew attention to the horrors of back street abortion in a *BMJ* paper. The paper reviewed 2,655 cases, describing their neurological consequences. In retirement, he continued his interests in literature, music, art and numismatics. He was a fellow of the Royal Numismatic Society. When he was 90 he was delighted to hear that presacral neurectomy had been reintroduced in the United States with the laparoscope. In 1947, he married Renate Loeser, a cytopathologist, who survived him along with two children, one of whom is Charles Davis, the neurosurgeon. He died on 21 October 2003.