Frank Ivor Tovey was born on 1 September 1921 in Bath, the son of Ernest and Ellen Louise Tovey. He was educated at Kingswood School and then entered Bristol University Medical School, graduating in 1944. The following year he applied to work overseas under the aegis of the Methodist Missionary Society (MMS). After various house jobs he passed the fellowship of the college in 1947 and left the UK in 1948 to work in Zhaotung, which was in the Yunan mountain area of south-west China. He began work as a surgeon in a small 40 bed hospital but it was during the final days of the Chinese Communist Revolution and his family had to leave in the June of 1949, swiftly followed by Frank in the August. Returning to Bristol he started to develop his interest in gastroenterology by working under William Capper, who was an expert in the field. In 1951 he was sent to Mysore by the MMS and joined the staff of the Holdsworth Memorial Hospital. Formerly the hospital had been used only by women and children and his task was to set up a men’s department. Over the next 16 years he developed the new department and, while carrying out the usual surgical procedures carried out innovative methods of correcting the deformities produced by leprosy. Eventually the college recognised the hospital as suitable for surgical training, nurse training was extended and much valuable outreach work was undertaken. In 1966 he was awarded the OBE for services to surgery and leprosy in India. On his return to the UK he was appointed consultant surgeon to the brand new Basingstoke and District General Hospital in 1968 and honorary research fellow in the department of surgery at University College Hospital (UCL), London. On retirement from his consultant post in 1986, he continued to run a clinic specifically for the foot problems of diabetic patients for the next six years. Into his 90’s he continued to carry out research as an honorary senior research associate in the department of surgery and interventional science at UCL and co-authored many papers on duodenal ulceration and staple diets, specifically in different areas of India but also worldwide. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, a member of the Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and a member of the British Society of Gastroenterology. He married Winifred Ethel née Hill on December 11th 1947. His wife predeceased him and he died from bronchopneumonia on 29 April 2019 aged 97. He was survived by their children, Rosemary, Jennifer, John and David, seven grandchildren and nine great grandchildren.