Gordon Vivian Catford was a consultant ophthalmic surgeon at St George’s Hospital, London. He was born on 23 November 1927 in Bristol. His father, Harry George Bascombe Catford, was a stockbroker; his mother, Gladys Annie Catford née Horton, was a licentiate of the Royal Academy of Music. Catford was educated at Clifton College, Bristol and went on to study medicine at Bristol University. He qualified in 1952. He held house appointments at Bristol Royal Infirmary and Bristol Eye Hospital and then carried out his National Service in the Royal Air Force as a graded specialist (from 1954 to 1956). He then joined the staff of Moorfields Eye Hospital, initially for a house post and then as a chief clinical assistant (from 1960 to 1964). From 1961 to 1963 he was first assistant and a senior registrar at St George’s Hospital. In 1963 he was appointed as a consultant ophthalmic surgeon at St George’s and also held consultant appointments at the Victoria Hospital for Children, the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital and the Royal Masonic Hospital. He was a clinical teacher at London University and the Missionary School of Medicine. After his retirement in 1988, he continued as a consultant ophthalmic surgeon at St Luke’s Hospital for the Clergy and was also a member of the Medical Appeals Tribunal in London. He was an examiner for the British Orthoptic Board, a member of the British Orthoptic Council (chairman from 1981 to 1985) and an adviser to the British Orthoptic Society from 1986. He was made an honorary fellow of the British Orthoptic Society in 1988. He was a founder member and council member of the UK Intraocular Implant Society-UK and Ireland Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons. He was a school governor of Linden Lodge School for the Blind and of his former school, Clifton College. He was a freeman of the City of London and a liveryman of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries. A freemason, he was chairman of the Middlesex Mark Benevolent Fund, a freemason charity, from 1996. He enjoyed gardening. In 1955 in Edinburgh he married June Crichton Baxter, a dance teacher. They had two sons, Gordon Baxter, a barrister, and Paul Nicholas, a personnel manager, and two grandchildren. Catford died on 17 February 2019 at the age of 91.