Gerard Longworth-Krafft was a medical officer at the Department of Health and Social Security. He was born in Manchester on 13 March 1913. His father, Gerardus Krafft, was a business man from Dordrecht, Holland. His mother was Sarah née Longworth. From Manchester Grammar School he won the Adams scholarship to Manchester University, where he graduated BA, intending to follow his father into business, but the outlook for business in the thirties was grim and he decided to enter medicine, went to St Mary's Hospital in 1935 and there developed a love of sailing which was to continue throughout his life. There he was much influenced by, and sailed with, Aleck Bourne. After qualifying, he did house jobs at St Mary's and then joined the RNVR as a surgeon lieutenant in 1942, spending two years on HMS *Broadway*, a destroyer accompanying North Atlantic Convoys, then on HMS *Gannett* based in Northern Ireland, and finally HMS *Chincara* in Cochin, where he prepared the medical facilities for the newly set-up base. After the war he continued his surgical training and, while a registrar at Southend General Hospital, met Catherine Johnston, also a doctor, whom he married, on which occasion he added Longworth to his name at the request of his mother, who was the last of the Longworths. Catherine later became a consultant radiologist. In 1955 he was appointed consultant surgeon to the West Dorset Hospital in Dorchester, but only for four sessions, not enough to support a growing family of four children, one of whom, Jenny, became a doctor. Reluctantly he forsook surgery and moved to the DHSS in 1960, doing medical assessment work, initially at Norcross and later at Basingstoke, before retiring in his seventies. He was a proud, clever man, fluent in several languages, and a keen amateur singer, sailor and skier. Catherine died at 81 in 2005. Gerard, his world having fallen apart, died six weeks later on 24 May 2005.