Edward Denis Ahern was born in Charleville, Queensland, Australia on 7 July 1888. He was the son of John Ahern, a police inspector, and his wife, Mary (née Thynne). He was educated at Nudgee College, Brisbane, and Melbourne University, graduating MB ChB in 1911. During the first world war he served with an Australian light horse regiment as a medical officer in Egypt with the rank of Captain. He served in the Australasian Medical Corps in the second world war and commanded the 112th Australian General Hospital at Zoowoomba with the rank of Colonel. He held appointments at the Mater Misercordia Hospital in Brisbane where he became honorary senior surgeon. He was Foundation Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons and was its President from 1940 to 1945. He married on 22 June 1922 and had one daughter and two sons. The younger son, Edward Gilles Ahern has been for many years a prominent orthopaedic surgeon in Vereeniging, near Johannesburg South Africa, and still practises in that area. In his early life he was a very keen golfer and played with a handicap of 4. He gave up golf in later life and became interested in farming and fishing. He was always, except during his last years, interested in horse racing and owned, at different times, a series of race horses which were singularly unsuccessful. He died sometime in 1983.