Alan Gyth Cox was a consultant surgeon at Northwick Park Hospital, London and a member of the scientific staff of the Clinical Research Centre, London. He was born on 9 February 1931 in the Eccelsall Bierlow district of Sheffield, West Riding of Yorkshire. His father, Reginald Robert Samuel Cox, was a lecturer in applied mathematics at the University of Sheffield, a keen amateur astronomer and honorary president of the Sheffield Astronomical Society; his mother, Liv Cox née Dehli, was born in Norway. Cox studied medicine at Sheffield University, qualifying in 1958. He gained an MD in 1962 and his fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1965 and of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1977. He was a research assistant in the department of surgery at the University of Sheffield, a lecturer in surgery at Glasgow University and a consultant surgeon at Hammersmith Hospital. He was later appointed to his post at Northwick Park Hospital, where he was also an honorary senior lecturer at St Mary’s Hospital Medical School and an honorary lecturer in surgery at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, London. He was a member of the Surgical Research Society and the British Society of Gastroenterology and wrote papers on gastrointestinal surgery. In 1957 he married Colleen Green. Cox died on 26 November 2020 at the age of 89.