Richard Orgias was born at Palmerston North, New Zealand, and went to the Palmerston North Boys' High School and then to Otago University where he graduated with the MB degree in 1934. For his post-graduate training Orgias came to London and worked at St Thomas's and University College Hospitals, and also went to the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford. He took a special interest in paediatric surgery and worked under Barrington-Ward at Great Ormond Street. On returning to New Zealand he became a consultant to the Wellington Hospital where he became distinguished as a teacher and writer, being assistant editor and contributor to the *New Zealand medical journal*. He was on the executive committee of the Wellington Division of the Cancer Society of New Zealand, and was on the New Zealand Committee of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, and an examiner both for the College and the University of Otago. Orgias served in the second world war in Italy and Japan, and after the war remained in the Territorial Army, retiring as Lieutenant-Colonel. But it was for his sound character and humanity, his deep religious convictions and love of his fellows that he will long be remembered. For the last five years of his life he knew he had an incurable disease, but faced this predicament with exemplary fortitude. He died on 30 October 1972, and his wife and family survived him.