John Dobree was born in Woolwich on 25 April 1914, the son of Hatherley Moor Dobree OBE, a civil engineer, and Muriel née Hope. He was educated at Victoria College, Jersey, and St Bartholomew's Hospital, where he qualified in 1938. He was house physician at the Metropolitan Hospital and the Western Ophthalmic Hospital, and then joined the RAMC, serving in the Middle East as regimental medical officer and ophthalmic specialist. On his return, he became chief assistant in the eye department at Bart's, and surgeon in charge there in 1956, and at the North Middlesex Hospital. He was secretary of the section of ophthalmology of the Royal Society of Medicine and vice-president of the Ophthalmological Society. He wrote extensively on the retina, contributing to volume ten of Duke-Elder's *System of ophthalmology* (London, Kimpton, 1967), and co-authoring *Differential diagnosis of fundus conditions* (London, Kimpton, 1972) with E S Perkins. He married Evelyn Maud Smyth in 1940 and had two children, Charles and Robert, one of whom became an ophthalmologist. He died at his home in Suffolk on 7 June 1999.