Arnold Mann was a director of surgery for Canberra hospitals, Australia. He was born in Essen, Germany on 22 December 1929, the son of Leo Mann, a shopkeeper, and Yetta Mann née Katz. Under the heading ‘family history’ on the biographical form he deposited at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, he wrote: ‘Political prisoner Germany circa 1936’ and ‘Invited to leave Germany in 1933 and France in 1938’. He was educated first in Paris, and then in Victoria, Australia, at George Street State School in Fitzroy, Collingwood Technical College and the University High School, Melbourne, where he was dux. He went on to study medicine at the University of Melbourne with a Commonwealth Government scholarship. He graduated in 1953 with the Ryan gold medals in medicine and surgery. He was a junior house officer, senior house officer, resident medical officer and orthopaedic registrar at the Royal Melbourne Hospital from 1954 to 1956. He then went to the UK for further training, as a surgical registrar in Leicester, and a thoracic surgical registrar at the Liverpool Regional Thoracic Centre. He gained his fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1958. He returned to Australia, where he was an honorary assistant surgeon at St Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne, from 1961 to 1969. He became a fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in 1963. From 1970 to 1971 he spent a year in Israel carrying out voluntary work. In 1972 he was a senior research assistant at the Royal Marsden Hospital, London, and, a year later, a locum senior lecturer at King’s College Hospital, London. In 1974 he went back to Australia, as a senior specialist in surgery, later becoming director of surgery at Canberra hospitals. In 1978 he was an international visiting professor of surgery at Cleveland Clinic, Ohio, USA. From 1986 to 1991 he was a visiting medical officer for Canberra hospitals and a consultant surgeon in private practice. In 1990 he was a lecturer to law students at the Australian National University and a year later set up in private practice in Melbourne. He researched the incidence of occupational injury and illness and wrote two textbooks on forensic medicine – *Medical assessment of injuries for legal purposes* (London, Butterworths, 1967) and *Medical negligence litigation: medical assessment of claims* (Redfern, NSW, Legal Books, 1989). He was a council member of the Australian Academy of Forensic Sciences from 1987. Outside medicine he enjoyed tennis, swimming, chess and music. He was also interested in literature, sociology, philosophy and the law. In 1976 he married Pearl Craig. He was a stepfather to her two children, Abigail, who died in 1993, and David Nigel. Mann died on 31 October 2017 at the age of 87.