Dame Joyce Margaretta Daws was a British thoracic surgeon who emigrated to Australia in 1956 and spent the rest of her life there. She was born in Hounslow on 21 July 1925 into a family with a naval connection and she was initially educated at the Royal School for Naval and Marine Officer’s Daughters. After then attending St Paul’s Girls’ School in Hammersmith, she won a scholarship to Cambridge University to study classics. During the second world war she decided to study medicine and enrolled at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine and London University graduating MB, BS in 1949. Awarded a postgraduate scholarship in 1952 to study surgery, she passed the fellowship of the college in 1955. While she was working at the Royal Free, the celebrated Australian surgeon Lorna Verdun Sisely visited the hospital during a trip to study new surgical methods and techniques. She persuaded Joyce to join her at the Queen Victoria Medical Centre (QVMC) in Melbourne and she moved there in 1956. Following her appointment at the QVMC Joyce worked at the Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital (1958 to 1985), the Royal Melbourne Hospital (1958 to 1967), Prince Henry’s Hospital (1967 to 1975) and at the Alfred Hospital from 1970 to 1985. She took a very active part in many medical organisations and was appointed Dame Commander of the British Empire (DBE) on 14 June 1975 for her services to medicine. Since 1974 she had been a member of the Victorian Nursing Council and was its chairman from 1983 to 1989. She was president of the Victoria Medical Women’s Society in 1974 and honorary secretary of the Victorian branch of the Australian Medical Association. In 1976 she was president of the Cancer Institute of Victoria and remained a board member from 1978 to 1980. Active on the board of the After Care Hospital, she was its president from 1980 to 1985. Outside medicine she enjoyed listening to opera, swimming, travel and the cultivation of proteas. She was chairman of the International Protea Association from 1987 to 1996 and a member of the Lyceum Club and Soroptimist International. She died in Heidelberg, Victoria on 13 June 2007 aged 81.