William Gordon Davidson was a senior consultant surgeon at Southland Hospital, New Zealand. He was born in Dunedin on 18 February 1916, and educated at Otago Boys High School, where he was dux and won the university entrance scholarship to Otago University. He qualified in 1940, with distinctions in anatomy and physiology, the Scott and Christie medals in anatomy and applied anatomy, and the senior scholarship in medicine. He also passed the primary as a student. After qualifying, he held junior posts and was a demonstrator in anatomy, before completing a year in general practice in 1948. In 1950 he came to London for surgical training, and was house surgeon at Hammersmith, and registrar at Billericay. After he had passed the final FRCS in 1953, he returned to New Zealand as surgical registrar at the Southland Hospital. In 1955 he became a junior consultant at Southland, and was subsequently appointed senior consultant surgeon, and director of surgery and supervisor of surgical studies. He also continued to lecture in anatomy and coach for the primary. He returned to England in 1967 to take a postgraduate refresher course in general and vascular surgery under Peter Martin, at the Hammersmith and Chelmsford. He was a keen member of the National Society on Alcoholism and Drug Addiction, the South Invercargill Rotary Club and the New Zealand Institute of Ambulance Officers. He married Irene Mabel Violet Brown, who predeceased him in 1958, and by whom he had a son and a daughter. He married again, to a Miss Nightingale. He is believed to have died in 1996.