Frank Robert Coffin was an oral surgeon in London. He was born in Wandsworth, London, on 21 September 1915, the son of a printer. After qualifying at the Royal Dental Hospital in 1938, he completed house jobs at Leicester Square and at the Middlesex (then the only resident dental post in the country). During the war he organised the emergency oral surgery service in London. In 1941, he joined the RAF, where he gained experience of maxillofacial injury in the UK and abroad. After the war, he became a medical student at the Middlesex Hospital and completed an ENT house job there in 1949. He was appointed as a consultant at the Royal Marsden Hospital, where he became interested in head and neck oncology, and was subsequently appointed to the staff of the Royal Dental Hospital and St George’s, Tooting. He was a recognised teacher for the University of London, the Royal Dental Hospital, St Bartholomew’s and the Institute of Cancer Research, London. He was particularly interested in pharmacology and lectured on the subject at the Royal Dental Hospital during the fifties and sixties. He gave many lectures abroad, in Denmark, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Asia and North and South America. He served on many consultants’ committees, and was also President of the hospitals group of the British Dental Association in 1977, and was, for a time, honorary treasurer and Chairman of the Dentists’ Provident Society. A true workaholic, he gave a full commitment to his many NHS hospitals, but still found time to enjoy skiing, sailing, travelling, and furniture and clock restoration. He was also an enthusiastic gardener. He remained unmarried. He died from cardiac failure on 13 January 2004.