Oliver Latham was a very kind and gentle man, revered by the great numbers of medical students who passed through the Old Medical School at Sydney University. He was born in Dublin, and received his early education in Ireland and subsequently at Harrow where he was a contemporary of Winston Churchill. He graduated in medicine from the University of Sydney in 1903 and devoted his interest to the study of neuropathology.

When I commenced medicine at Sydney in March, 1941, fresh from school, beginning in the midst of deepening wartime crisis, the early years were made much happier for the young medical students by such men, all of whom are gratefully remembered by the students of the early 1940s. Following our happy undergraduate experience with him, we were delighted to retain contact with him at neurological meetings. He never lost his enthusiasm for medicine, and especially neuropathology. For many years he studied and worked in physically inadequate, poorly lit quarters in the basement of the Old Medical School of Sydney University. There he was always ready to discuss problems in neuropathology.

From 1910 when he took charge of the laboratory of the Mental Health Department, Oliver Latham produced a large number of papers, the contributions covering a wide range - cerebral glioma, disseminated sclerosis, the hereditary ataxias, somatic sympathetic innervation of muscle, the control of enteric fever in mental hospitals, encephalitis. His scholarship and interests covered the full range of neurology.

He had the charm of his native land and was much loved by all who knew him. After the untimely death of his only son, a neurosurgeon who resembled his father in many ways, the old man felt that life had lost much of its savour. When he died at the age of ninety-seven after a long and full life he was the doyen of neuropathology in Australia. Medicine for him was the vehicle for a brilliant career and a constantly enjoyable hobby.