Herbert Bernhard Eckstein was born in Dusseldorf, Germany, on 11 July 1926. His father Albert Eckstein was Professor of Paediatrics in Dusseldorf, Hamburg and then in Ankara (Turkey) where his family settled in the early 1930's. His mother, Erna, was the daughter of Professor A Schlossmann, Professor in Paediatrics in Dresden and Dusseldorf. Indeed three generations of doctors in these families were involved in medical or surgical paediatrics. Herbert was educated privately in Turkey until 1939 and then from 1939 to 1944 at the Leys School Cambridge, Clare College 1944-1947 and the Middlesex Hospital 1947 to 1950 qualifying MRCS, LRCP and MB, BCh and MA in 1950 and then passing the Final FRCS examination in 1957, MD Cambridge 1960 and MCh 1962. In his training he was influenced by Brian Truscott and Philip Ghey, Denis Browne and George Macnab. After spending two years in Hacettepe Children's Hospital, Ankara, he returned to Great Ormond Street in 1961 with a Rockefeller Foundation grant, being a senior registrar and becoming consultant at Queen Mary's Hospital, Carshalton, 1963, the Children's Hospital, Sydenham, 1964, and Great Ormond Street, 1965. He was an examiner for the DCH, he lectured on RCS courses and was a member of the British Association of Paediatric Surgeons and the Society for Research into Hydrocephalus and Spina Bifida. He was a tireless worker, devoted to his specialty, and his output of surgical papers was prodigious, amounting to some two hundred, covering a range of paediatric conditions, especially hydrocephalus and paediatric urology. He contributed several chapters to *Paediatric urology*, 1968, edited by D I Williams, and to *Surgical paediatric urology*, 1977, with R Hohenfellner and D I Williams. He was an honorary member of the German Society of Paediatric Surgeons, corresponding member of the German Urological Association and co-editor of *Zeitschrift fur Kinderchirurgie*. He married Maria Schroder in 1955 and they had one daughter, Susan and two sons, Philip, and Michael who became a doctor. He enjoyed tennis in his youth and cooking and translating German/English texts. He died on 5 November 1986 after ill health had forced him into early retirement.