Roger Armour was a consultant general and vascular surgeon at the Lister Hospital in Stevenage, who in retirement invented an inexpensive ophthalmoscope, which could be used in poorer regions of the world. He was born Roger Hanif Ahmed on 19 August 1934 in Murree, a small hill station in the foothills of the Himalayas, the son of Aziz Ahmed, a veterinary surgeon, and Edith Florence Ahmed née Raymond. Roger had a younger brother, David; both became highly-respected surgeons. Roger’s first school was in Kidderminster, but subsequently his schooling was split between Lahore and Peshawar. It was in Peshawar that he did his O and A level equivalents and, having achieved amongst the highest scores in the country, he was accepted to study medicine at the prestigious King Edward Medical College in Lahore. In his final years as a student he found himself having to work as both a temporary nurse and stand-in doctor. He has said this was when he learnt that medically knowing about diseases is a world away from actually looking after and caring for patients. It had a lasting effect, to the point where he always thought nursing more important and more difficult than medicine. It was a salutary lesson on the importance of compassion and caring that guided his whole life and was so apparent both to those who worked with him and of course to his patients, for whom he cared deeply. In 1956, he qualified as a doctor and went to Britain with £20 in his pocket, and took his first post as a house surgeon at North Hertfordshire Hospital in Hitchin. It was here that he met Gillian Evans, a pretty staff nurse who had just accepted an offer to become an air hostess with Pan Am. He quickly persuaded her to become his wife instead and proposed to her on a bench halfway up Windmill Hill. They married in 1957 and had the happiest of marriages, celebrating their diamond wedding anniversary in 2017. Realising how competitive it was to become appointed as a consultant surgeon, Roger ensured that he was more than adequately qualified by first obtaining the fellowships of the Royal College of Surgeons of both England and Edinburgh. As if that wasn’t enough, he then successfully studied for his membership of the Royal Colleges of Physicians, followed by a diploma in tropical medicine and hygiene, and finally by a Liverpool masters’ degree in surgery. He was appointed as a consultant surgeon in Birkenhead and Wallasey, where he spent three years. It was here that Roger and Gillian had their much-loved family, daughters Jasmin and Sara, and son Steven. It was at the end of the three years in 1972 that Roger was appointed as a consultant general and vascular surgeon to the Lister Hospital, Stevenage, where in essence his career had originally started. He soon built a reputation as not only a technically gifted surgeon but one who led with compassion, dedication and commitment. He was held in the very highest respect across all layers of hospital life and made lifelong friends – the greatest compliment being that he was a surgeon’s surgeon. With retirement in 1996 Roger remained as active as ever. He was most concerned with the incidence of blindness, especially in Africa and Asia, much of which was potentially curable but untreated because diagnoses were unachievable without the aid of an expensive ophthalmoscope. He set about designing a cheap lens-free ophthalmoscope at a cost price of just £1. It won several awards, including two Medical Futures Innovation awards, the 2005 Edward de Bono medal for application and simplicity, and was placed second in the global Saatchi and Saatchi World Changing Ideas award. Roger was made a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 2018 – a source of immense pride to him. Roger died peacefully at home on 17 September 2020, surrounded by his loving family. He was 86. With his death, the world of medicine and we ourselves are all the poorer. He was a gentleman, a teacher and the surgeon par excellence to his patients and colleagues, and to his family a dearly-loved husband, father and grandfather to his beloved grandsons Daniel and James. He led a remarkable life and his biography is testament to the caring and integrity which was evident in everything he did and witnessed by his many friends and family who will miss him deeply.