Francis Davies was born at Cardiff in June 1914. He was educated at Llanelly County School, and Pagefield College, Swansea, and entered the London Hospital Medical School in 1936. He gained a prize in clinical medicine, and qualified with the Conjoint Diploma in 1940. After house appointments at the Metropolitan Hospital he entered the Royal Navy and served during the second world war in destroyers on convoy duty until 1944, when he was invalided out with a back injury. When he was again fit he joined the neurosurgical department of the London Hospital, a step which led to his devotion to this branch of surgery and determined his career. Like many young men whose training had been disorganised by the war he found it difficult to obtain appropriate general surgical experience. In pursuit of this he held junior surgical posts at the London Hospital, and undertook a variety of work including general practice. In 1954 he obtained the Fellowship and was appointed a senior registrar to Diana Beck at the Middlesex Hospital; during this appointment he studied the long-term effects of thorotrast and reported a technique of pituitary ablation by radio-active substances. In 1957 Davies was appointed neurological surgeon to Hurstwood Park Hospital, which he built up into a vigorous regional centre, working alone for the first five years. Francis Davies was a sound and cautious surgeon with excellent clinical judgement, whose outstanding quality was selfless devotion to his patients. Interest, kindliness, integrity and reliability were the attributes praised by his senior nursing staff. For many years he gave lectures at the Nurses Training School in Brighton, which were greatly appreciated. In 1960 he suffered his first attack of coronary occlusion and this was followed by others, culminating in his last fatal attack. Davies died suddenly while on a holiday in Penarth on 15 August 1968; he was survived by his wife and their four children.