Kenneth Richard Archer was born in Auckland, New Zealand, on 6 November 1915. His father, John Albert Archer, was in the New Zealand Public Works Department, and his mother, Elsie Mary, was a secretary and housewife. He was educated at Belmont Primary School in Auckland, and then Takapuna Grammar School. He studied medicine at Otago University, where he qualified in 1938. He served in the RNZAMC throughout the second world war, where he saw service in Italy and the Pacific. He was posted to Hiroshima, Japan, to set up a field hospital, just seven days after the nuclear bomb was dropped. He was mentioned in dispatches, won four campaign medals and was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel. After the war he went to London to study for the FRCS at St Thomas's Hospital and then returned to Palmerston as a consultant surgeon. There he spent his leisure time fishing, gardening and playing bowls, and was a keen member of the New Zealand College of Community Medicine, as well as St John Ambulance. He married Ruth Lomax in 1949 and they had two daughters, Mary Jane and Elizabeth, a trained nurse. He died on 6 November 1999.