Kelvin Thomas was a consultant surgeon at Nottingham General and King Mill hospitals. He was born in Hong Kong on 11 November 1926, the son of George Harold Thomas, a surgeon, and Nora née Gourdin. His father was formally admitted as a fellow by election by Sir Arthur Porritt in 1961, who went to Hong Kong to confer this honour on his way back from New Zealand. During the Second World War, following the fall of Hong Kong, Kelvin was sent to the Woodstock School in Mussoorie, India, from which he went on to Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. He trained at Guy’s Hospital and after qualification became house surgeon to Sam Wass, and later senior registrar to Philip Reading. He did junior posts at St Olave’s Hospital, Rotherhithe, was an anatomy prosector at the College under Stansfield, and then specialised in ENT, doing posts at Tunbridge Wells, Addenbrooke’s and Guy’s. He was appointed consultant to the Nottingham General Hospital and King Mill Hospital in 1966, retiring at the age of 65. He was a very talented sculptor, exhibiting regularly at the Medical Art Society and winning prizes at the Royal Society of British Artists. His bust of the Prince of Wales stands in the entrance hall of the Queen’s Medical Centre, Nottingham, but he was more generally admired for his graceful and delicate bronze nudes. A short, quiet modest man, he had great charm. His latter years were marred by myocardiac infarctions and he underwent by-pass surgery. In 1956 he married Diana Mary Allen, a schoolteacher. They had two children, a son, Stephen Austin Thomas, who became a urologist, and a daughter, Anna Rachel, a ceramic artist. Kelvin wrote his memoirs, *My father’s coat*, for private distribution. He died on 13 November 2005, some eight months after a fall from a tree from which he never regained consciousness.