George Mann was an ear, nose and throat surgeon at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge between 1965 and 1983. George was born on 4 June 1923 in Cheltenham, the son of Edgar Mann and Winifred Mann née Ballinger, and was subsequently educated at Cheltenham Grammar School. Whilst still at school he suffered a complicated appendicitis at the age of 16, which made him decide to become a surgeon. He qualified in 1947 having graduated from Merton College, Oxford and completed his clinical studies at University College Hospital in London. He became a house surgeon at the North Middlesex Hospital in December 1947 and a house physician at Woolwich Memorial Hospital in July 1948. Having completed his National Service as a medic in the RAF in September 1950, he quickly decided on a career in ear, nose and throat surgery and became an ENT registrar to Geoffrey Barker at Cheltenham General Hospital until March 1952. He then moved to Oxford as a registrar under the tutelage of Gavin Livingstone at the Radcliffe Infirmary and subsequently Ronald Macbeth, attaining his English FRCS and Edinburgh FRCS in 1955. In December of that year he became a senior registrar to Austen Young and Robert Peasegood at Sheffield Royal Infirmary. He was appointed as a consultant ENT surgeon at Chesterfield Hospital in 1958 and practised within the generality of the specialty. In 1965, he moved to Cambridge following his appointment to Addenbrooke’s Hospital and received an honorary Cambridge MA on joining the consultant teaching staff as well as membership of Peterhouse College. Whilst both consultants at that time were generalists some sub-specialisation was developing and, as George’s senior colleague Kenneth Wilsden had an interest in neck surgery, it was not surprising that George further developed his interest in otology and microsurgical techniques and in particular, following the worldwide emergence of stapedectomy for otosclerosis, he began performing the operation in Cambridge. He set up a hearing assessment clinic for congenitally deaf children at Cherry Hinton Hall. He retired from Addenbrooke’s Hospital and from clinical practice in the same year at the age of 60 years. George loved to travel and he visited many countries beyond Europe, including Iceland, Namibia, the Galapagos Islands and as far as China. A trip to Egypt in 1977 sparked an interest in archaeology and he was able to develop this in his retirement. He studied Egyptian skulls stored in a basement in the archaeology department of Cambridge University, from which he was able to submit an MPhil thesis in 1984 on the torus auditivus (exostosis of the deep external auditory canal), which persuaded archaeologists that bony exostoses in the external ear canal were caused by swimming in the cold water of the Nile rather than by heredity. His expertise as a bone specialist archaeologist was utilised between 1983 and 1995, in particular for the Brochtorff Circle excavations on Gozo, Malta with Caroline Malone, Simon Stoddart and David Trump, and the work provided data for the human remains catalogue of the excavation report of 2009. Apart from archaeology, his hobbies included studies in the practise, theory and history of art. George Mann did not have the archetypal surgical persona, but was humble and reserved, with a quiet, often laconic, sense of humour. He was loyal and supportive and liked by all who met him in whatever sphere. In 1949, he married Ilse Metzger, with whom he had one son, Anthony, and a daughter, Margaret. In 1983, he divorced his first wife and subsequently married Sheila Bouchier. George Mann died on 7 April 2019 at the age of 95.