Alan John Edwards was born on 25 July 1928 and educated at Drayton Manor School. He served in the Royal Air Force from 1946 to 1949 and after a year at Brunel College, London, entered Christ's College, Cambridge in 1951 as a scholar and took a first-class honours degree in the Natural Sciences Tripos. Another scholarship took him to St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College for his clinical studies where he was awarded nearly all the student prizes, including the Brackenbury Scholarship in surgery. He passed the FRCS Primary while a house surgeon on the professorial unit and later continued his training in traumatic and thoracic surgery at the North Middlesex and Brompton Hospitals, where he was greatly influenced by Russell Brock. He then rejoined the professorial unit at Bart's, becoming especially interested in pathology of the breast. His next appointment was at Montreal as Hosper Fellow in Surgery, which entailed responsibility for the management of teaching at McGill. Here laboratory work on the immunology of the experimental tumour led to an MSc degree in 1964, to a lasting belief in this theory of tumorigenesis, and to his Arris and Gale Lecture at the Royal College of Surgeons in 1975. He had further training in medical cancer surgery at Charleston Medical School and on return to Britain took the FRCS in 1961 and the MCh in 1967. In 1968 he was appointed senior lecturer in surgery at St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College and consultant surgeon to Hackney Hospital. In 1974 he moved to Whipps Cross Hospital, though still retaining his connection with the medical college as an honorary research fellow. As surgical tutor and director of the Whipps Cross FRCS course he was completely in his element. At the same time he became increasingly prominent in the activities of the various societies to which he belonged. He was a fine operator, backed by wide experience, and was equally at home in the surgery of the head and neck, the oesophagus, the abdomen, the urogenital tract and the blood vessels. His patients thought the world of him, and his continued interest in each tended to lead to follow-up clinics of daunting dimensions. As a colleague he was held in high esteem: a delightful man to work with, always stimulating and ever ready to lend a hand. On 23 August 1952 he married Vivian Jutting, a fellow medical student at Bart's. They had two children, David and Amanda. He loved sailing, as did his son David, and both were experienced sailors. The family had a villa in Cyprus and on 15 April 1976 Alan and his son were out sailing when an unforecasted sirocco blew up and tragically they were both drowned.