George Gordon Bruce was born at Aberdeen on 25 August 1891. He was educated at Fordyce Academy and Aberdeen University and was awarded the Keith Gold Medal in surgery, graduating MB ChB Aberdeen in 1915. He then served as a Captain RAMC in France and the Dardanelles and was mentioned in dispatches in 1918. On demobilisation he resumed his surgical studies and took the FRCS in 1921. In 1925 he was elected honorary consultant to the Royal Aberdeen Hospital for Sick Children and in 1927 assistant surgeon to the Royal Infirmary, gaining full consultant status before the second world war. From 1939 until his retirement in 1951 he was consultant surgeon to the Royal Family in Scotland. Though by appointment a general surgeon, his contribution lay initially in the field of paediatric surgery and later in the surgery of the thyroid. In the latter he was guided and influenced by Dunhill and Joll in London and by Wilkie in Edinburgh, and it was here that he made his major contribution. In the early days the surgery of thyrotoxicosis carried a heavy mortality, and Bruce must have been one of the first general surgeons to achieve a century of thyroidectomies for toxic goitre without mortality. By nature he was canny and reticent and tended to limit his circle of acquaintances to a comparatively small number, but on these acquaintances, particularly in the junior ranks, he had a profound influence. His surgery was searching in its planning, scrupulous in its performance, and exacting in its aftercare, and woe betide any member of his staff who did not fully subscribe to these principles. No word of praise or thanks escaped his lips. For him total efficiency was the norm and he was not interested in less. But for the select few whom he elected to train as his juniors he showed understanding and even warmheartedness and spared no effort in instilling into them his own concepts of the art of surgery. His expertise was not limited to surgery, for he was equally proficient in the field, both on the river bank and on the grouse moor and on low ground shooting. He was an expert fly fisherman and had a deep knowledge of salmon ecology. His many pursuits and interests, his proficiency in all he undertook, and his refusal to accept any compromise short of total efficiency gained him the reputation which will long continue and flourish in his native north-eastern Scotland. He married Jane Gill and they had one daughter, who is also a medical graduate. He died on 6 June 1976 aged 84.