Beatrice Dobbie was born on 5 July 1903 at Sutton Coldfield in Warwickshire, the second daughter of John Edward Willmott, a company secretary, and his wife Florence, née Grannidge. She was educated at Devon Lodge, Sutton Coldfield, King Edward VI High School, Birmingham, and subsequently at Girton College, Cambridge, which she entered with a Carlisle scholarship. After leaving Cambridge in 1925 with a BA, she received her medical training in Birmingham and qualified with the conjoint diploma in 1929, obtaining the BChir in the same year and the MB of that University in 1934. She became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1931 and acquired the Diploma in Medical Radiology and Electrology in 1935, as she had already developed an interest in the use of radium as a therapeutic agent. When she was appointed as a house surgeon at the General Hospital, Miss Willmott Dobbie was only the second woman ever to obtain such a post. She was elected to the staff of the Birmingham and Midland Hospital for Women, founded by Lawson Tait, in 1934, to supervise the use of radium in gynaecological cancer and thus began her life-long interest in the treatment of cancer of the cervix, in which she became an acknowledged expert. Though small in stature and with her Eton crop and twinkling eyes she portrayed an almost boyish, but infectious, enthusiasm for her specialty. Miss Willmott Dobbie was a quick and dexterous surgeon but she was an inveterate conversationalist so that whilst operating discussion ranged from important details of technique to matters of local or national interest. She was extremely kind and encouraging to her junior colleagues. For some years one of her afternoon operating lists was scheduled to follow a morning list allocated to the newly-emerging specialty of vascular surgery and the heroics then involved frequently meant that this list extended into the early afternoon and sometimes beyond that. Miss Willmott Dobbie never complained or remonstrated with her junior colleagues about the delay but always maintained a keen interest in whatever was being attempted and frequently expressed her amazement that such things were now possible. In 1940 she married Joseph William Dobbie, a consultant radiotherapist, but there were no children of the marriage. Her interests outside medicine were many and included bell ringing, at which she was very adroit, local historical research, and restoring old books. Her publications included *Obstetrics and gynaecology: a synoptic guide to treatment* in 1948 and another *An English rural community: Batheaston with Saint Catherine* in 1969. She also published a history of King Edward VI High School (jointly) in 1971 and an interesting study of maternal mortality in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. When, in retirement, she enrolled as one of the first group of undergraduates in the Open University for an arts degree she was very amused, but nevertheless pleased, to find that one of her own books was listed as recommended reading. She maintained her vivacity and many interests until old age, and died on 9 December 1995, at the age of 92.