Peter Bayliss Clarke was a consultant oral and maxillofacial surgeon at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. He was born in Oldbury in the Midlands on 8 August 1927, the second of four children of John George Clarke, a director of Albright and Wilson, a large chemical manufacturer, and Lilian Florence Clarke née Grove. All his siblings qualified in medicine. During the Second World War Clarke was sent to Ruthin School in north Wales as a boarder. He studied dentistry at the University of Birmingham University, also gaining a BSc, and went on to qualify in medicine. He went to Kenya for his National Service, just at the beginning of the Mau Mau rebellion. On his return, he moved to London, to the Eastman Dental Hospital, where he came under the influence of Sir William Kelsey Fry. He later moved on to East Grinstead as a senior registrar to Terence Ward. In 1961 Clarke was appointed as a consultant oral and maxillofacial surgeon at Aberdeen, where he stayed until his retirement. At the time of his appointment, he was a single-handed consultant and became by default the regional dental postgraduate dean. He established a reputation as an excellent teacher of dental practitioners. He became an examiner for the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow and was given honorary fellowships of each of their dental faculties. In 1979 he was awarded an OBE for services to dental education in northeast Scotland. He was for many years a member of the editorial committee of the *Journal of Cranio-Maxillofacial Surgery*. During his training he had spent some time at Rostock, East Germany. He later became an enthusiastic supporter of the European Association of Maxillofacial Surgery. In 1974 he was elected to the council of the British Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons, becoming the president in 1980. Throughout his career, he was an enthusiastic participant in the Territorial Army. He received the Territorial Decoration for length of service and by the time of his retirement he had achieved the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Royal Army Dental Corps, Territorial and Army Volunteer Reserve. Outside medicine he enjoyed fishing and hunting. Clarke died on 16 February 2007 at the age of 79 in Woodend Hospital, Aberdeen. He was the father of Nick, Amanda and Paula, father-in-law of Andrew, Graham and Silvana, husband of Vivienne, grandpa of Claire, Jessica and Eric, and the partner of Mabel.