First appearing at the opening of season four in the episode "Ambush", Elizabeth Corday is a British surgeon who has moved to Chicago to gain more experience in trauma surgery. We learn in her first episode that she comes from a whole family of surgeons; Corday's grandfather was a surgeon, as is her father and, since there are no boys in her family, she took on that role. In a later episode we learn that her father is a Consultant surgeon at St. Thomas' Hospital, London. Corday's mother (played by Judy Parfitt) is an astrophysicist with whom she has a rather rocky relationship; Corday feels that her mother didn't spend enough time with her as a girl and that she was "raised by nannies and boarding schools", although she finds a more nuanced perspective on things once she becomes a mother herself. Though the two do seem to come to some kind of mutual agreement, the relationship is still strained. However, Elizabeth has a good relationship with her father, Charles (although he is hostile towards her mother, having been divorced over ten years prior).