George Northcroft was born on 17 June 1911 in Harley Street, London, at the house of his father, a well-known orthodontist. His medical education was at St John's College, Cambridge, and the London Hospital, where he qualified in 1937. He began his career in neurosurgery with an appointment at the Radcliffe Infirmary as house surgeon to Hugh Cairns, who had recently moved from the London Hospital to be the first occupant of the Nuffield chair of surgery. In the early part of the war he joined No 1 Mobile Neurosurgical Unit, one of a number organised by Cairns, and, under the command of PB Ashcroft, the unit embarked for Egypt in February 1941 and was engaged in a forward position in the campaigns in the Western Desert. Northcroft was awarded the MBE for his military service and, as a result of his experiences, wrote an early report on traumatic thrombosis of the carotid artery in the *British Journal of Surgery*. He also contributed to the 1947 War Surgery supplement of the same journal, which was devoted to head wounds. After the war he continued to practise neurosurgery, first at the Regional Neurosurgical Unit at Joyce Green Hospital, Dartford (which he had helped to set up) and later at the Brook Hospital, Woolwich, to which it was transferred. He developed one of the first postgraduate centres in a non-teaching hospital in London, and also organised a successful primary course for young surgeons taking the FRCS. As happened to more than one, on returning to civilian life he had difficulty in passing the Fellowship, not obtaining it until 1958. He remained consultant neurosurgeon at the Brook until his retirement, and was also civilian adviser to the British Army and honorary consultant to the Royal Herbert Hospital while it remained open as a military institution. Northcroft was a dextrous and quick surgeon and an excellent teacher, both at postgraduate and undergraduate level. He was also a talented pianist, a good squash and tennis player and a keen and skilful gardener. He married twice, and when he died on 18 February 1996 of carcinoma of the prostate, he was survived by his second wife, Vivienne, five children and three grandchildren.