Alfred Petty was a consultant surgeon at Newcastle General Hospital. He was born in South Shields on 20 March 1925. His father and mother – Jack and Nellie Petty – were both teachers. Following time spent working at the Ernest Rutherford laboratory in Manchester from 1910 to 1911 and service in the First World War, his father chose to follow a career as a mathematics teacher in South Shields. Alf grew up and went to school in South Shields and, as a teenager, experienced the bombing of the war years. He trained in medicine at Newcastle and qualified in 1948. His training following qualification was interrupted by two years’ service in the Army in Egypt from 1949 from 1951. After posts in York and Manchester, he became a surgical registrar in Newcastle in 1955. In 1959, he gained a Fulbright travel grant to undertake two years’ research in the USA, where he worked on the control of pancreatic exocrine secretion. He then trained as a senior registrar in Aberdeen from 1962 until taking up his consultant post in Newcastle General Hospital in 1963. At Newcastle, he established with surgical and anaesthetic colleagues the trauma units and linked intensive care units, working closely with Jo Stoddart who established the new ITU (intensive treatment unit) facility at the Newcastle Royal Victoria Infirmary. This was the generation that established the value and working practices of such units. He was an excellent team builder and built up the unit to be the major trauma centre for the Newcastle area. He moved into general surgery in his fifties and developed expertise in abdominal and anorectal surgery while maintaining his general surgical skills. He was a tutor for the Royal College of Surgeons and a meticulous surgeon who delighted in communicating the nuances of and variations in anatomy. In retirement Alf spent many very happy years with his wife Vera (née Tilly). They had met as children and enjoyed a 69-year marriage. They travelled widely and Alf had an opportunity to indulge his interests in computing and astronomy. Illness did not arrive in either his or Vera’s lives until their late eighties. Alf died on 6 April 2019 at the age of 94 and was survived by Vera, their son Richard, who to his incomprehension pursued a career as a neurologist in Glasgow, daughter Nicola, a retired lecturer in musculoskeletal physiotherapy, and by step-grand and great grandchildren.