Francis Joseph Damato was born in Malta on 2 February 1914, the son of Joseph Damato, an architect, and Josephine, née Farrugia. He was educated at St Paul's School, Valetta, and the Royal Malta University Medical School where he qualified in 1937. His brother, Pierre, became an ENT surgeon and a Fellow of the College and another brother, Emanuel, who predeceased him, was a popular general practitioner. Two of his nephews also took up medicine and one of them, Bertil Damato, became FRCS. Francis Damato survived the bombardment of Malta during the second world war when he was a house surgeon in the emergency hospital in the dockyard area until it was forced to close. He came to the UK to train in ophthalmology in 1944 working with F A Williamson-Noble at the Western Ophthalmic Hospital and Sir Allan Goldsmith at the Central London Eye Hospital. He took the DO course at Oxford University in 1948, and returned to Malta in 1949 where he was appointed ophthalmic surgeon to the Central Hospital on the retirement of Professor Preziosi. He wrote various articles on the causes and incidence of blindness in Malta, including trachoma (a study stimulated by a visit to Tunisia as a young man) and diabetic retinopathy. Later he was appointed senior ophthalmic surgeon to the Maltese Health Department and the University of Malta, and consultant in ophthalmology to the Royal Navy in Malta. Damato was an extremely cultured man, fluent in several languages and interested in philately, archaeology, walking and travelling. He married his cousin, Marcelle D'Amato, on 16 March 1954. She was a medical student whose family had been killed by a stray bomb apparently from an American aircraft, which had destroyed her house in Sfax, Tunisia. Francis and Marcelle had two daughters, Isabelle (Hero) who became a lecturer in ocular pathology at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London and married Marco Hero Preziosi, FRCP, and Josette (Bettany) who became a physiotherapist in Buffalo, NY. He died on June 13 1986 in Malta, survived by his wife and daughters.