Ogilvie Duthie, the eldest son of the director of education at Salford, was born on 19 September 1899, in Manchester. After education at Manchester Grammar School he enlisted in the Navy in 1916, at the age of 17, as a Sub-Lieutenant. Entering Manchester University after the war he qualified in 1921 and became house surgeon to Professor John Morley at the Manchester Royal Infirmary. He was then appointed as a resident at the Manchester Royal Eye Hospital which he served most loyally for almost forty years as house surgeon, resident surgical officer, assistant surgeon and consultant. He also held appointments at the Christie Hospital and Salford Royal. After the second world war he secured the FRCS and was instrumental in forming the Manchester University Department of Ophthalmology against stiff opposition. He was later appointed reader in ophthalmology at the University and developed a very busy department with 65 beds, ably assisted by Alan Stanworth as his chief assistant. He was one of the first surgeons in England to adopt the technique of intracapsular extraction of cataract and was visited by many who learnt much from his rapid and scrupulously careful surgery. Though a busy clinician his keen and alert mind made him an invaluable member of many committees and he was on the governing body of the Manchester Royal Infirmary. An original council member of the Faculty of Ophthalmology at Manchester, he was President for three years in the nineteen-fifties. He was also a former Vice-President of the North of England Ophthalmological Society. Outside his own clinical work his chief love was in the growth and progress of the Oxford Ophthalmological Congress, to the council of which he was elected in 1946. He gave invaluable help in the administration, became deputy master in 1957 and Master of the Congress in 1959 for the Jubilee meeting at Balliol College and the University School of Physiology. His interest in the Congress continued throughout his life and he presided over a past masters dinner only four months before his death. Duthie contributed some forty papers to the literature, notably on cataract and glaucoma. He was noted for his great capacity for hard work and his good sense of humour and he gave much to his specialty as well as to his patients. His main hobbies were golf and gardening. He married in 1930 and, when he died on 20 November 1977, he was survived by his wife and three daughters.