Andrew Elkington

Born of a line of doctors stretching back into the 18th century, Andrew Robert Elkington had his medical education at Clare College Cambridge and St. Thomas’ Hospital in London and qualified in 1960. After several jobs, including obstetrics and general practice, his first step on the ophthalmic ladder was an SHO post at Southampton Eye Hospital in 1966. He then moved to the Westminster Hospital, then to Moorfields, then back to the Westminster, and, finally, with admirable symmetry, back again to Southampton, where he became a consultant in 1974 and later a professor in 1990.

By his own admission he was not a pioneering surgeon, nor would he claim to have advanced the frontiers of ophthalmic knowledge. His contribution to the specialty was more fundamental, as …