Nicholas Reginald Boeree was a consultant orthopaedic spinal surgeon based in Southampton who was well-known internationally in his chosen specialty for his clinical trials evaluating the effectiveness of new spinal implants. He was a man of considerable energy and wide-ranging interests, including a long-standing passion for motorcycling, which sadly led to his untimely death in a head on collision. Nick was born on 11 June 1958 in Torbay. His father, Bruce, completed his pre-clinical medical education at Oriel College, Oxford, and clinical training at the London Hospital, Whitechapel. He specialised in obstetrics and gynaecology with the RAF, before taking up a civilian post in clinical research. His mother Margaret was a nurse at the London. Nick was the oldest of three children. He had a sister, Caroline, and a brother, Giles, neither of whom are involved in the medical profession. The name 'Boeree' is of Dutch origin, though the family have held British nationality for several generations. As determined by his father's posting, Nick's early years were spent in Changi, Singapore, where he lived until about the age of five. The family then returned to England, living initially in Buckinghamshire and then in the village of Roydon, Essex. He was educated at Broxbourne Comprehensive School in Hertfordshire. Having not quite obtained the necessary A levels to go to the London Hospital Medical College, he urgently dispatched a letter to the dean, explaining exactly why he should still be accepted for medical training. The dean was persuaded and Nick entered the London Hospital Medical College in 1976. He spent an extra year achieving a BSc in anatomy and qualified MB BS in June 1982. He spent his pre-registration house officer year at the London. From his early student days, Nick had always been keen to pursue a career in surgery and, accordingly, after house jobs, he spent a year as an anatomy demonstrator at the London, from 1983 to 1984. During this time he passed the primary FRCS examination. He then undertook his general surgical training as a senior house officer and registrar in Plymouth, proceeding to FRCS Edinburgh in the spring of 1988 and the English FRCS in July 1988. Nick was appointed to the Bristol registrar rotation in trauma and orthopaedics in September 1988. Here he soon acquired an interest in spinal surgery. In April 1990 he successfully applied for the spinal fellowship to Keele University, giving him the opportunity to work at the Hartshill Orthopaedic Centre, Stoke-on-Trent, with John Dove, who had developed his own sublaminar wire and rectangular steel rod implants both to correct spinal deformity and to stabilise single or multiple level fusions of the spine. This technique gained popularity among spinal surgeons during this period. Nick returned to the Bristol rotation in September 1991. He was appointed as an orthopaedic senior registrar to the Southampton University Hospitals in July 1992. Of particular note at this time was the development of Nick's clinical research interests. He was awarded a major British Orthopaedic Association Wishbone Trust research grant in 1991 to investigate the materials and techniques available for sublaminal wire fixation of the spine. This continued his collaboration with John Dove. In 1992 Nick gained a further research award from the International Society for the Study of the Lumbar Spine (ISSLS). There followed a number of papers and presentations, culminating in two best paper prizes at international meetings. Other areas of research concerned MRI imaging of the knee, the value of ultrasound in the diagnosis of congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH) and a long-term review of total hip replacements in the young. Perhaps the pinnacle of his distinctive training years was the award of the Robert Jones Travelling Scholarship, which was supplemented by the Royal College of Surgeons New York Foundation Fellowship and the Zimmer Spinal Deformity Fellowship. These awards enabled him to travel widely to spinal centres in the USA during four months in the summer of 1994. Nick was appointed as a consultant orthopaedic spinal surgeon to the Southampton University Hospitals in April 1995. Later in 1998, with the amalgamation of the orthopaedic spinal and spinal neurosurgery services between Southampton and Winchester, he became joint clinical director in spinal surgery. He subsequently replaced Robert Jackson, on the latter's retirement in 1999, as the senior spinal orthopaedic surgeon. Over the years, Nick's working practice remained part-time NHS and part-time private practice, the latter based at the spine clinic, the Nuffield Hospital, Eastleigh. He continued to give priority to clinical research, despite the many demands on his time. Between 1995 and 2004 he gave multiple presentations on new anterior and posterior spinal instrumentation systems, with publications in the mainstream orthopaedic and spinal journals. Invited lectures took him to South Africa (in 1999 and 2001), Belgium (2000), Canada (2003) and to the USA for the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS). An example of his entrepreneurial nature was his study into ECG changes affecting surgeons during major surgery. His participation in this trial led his colleagues to assign to him the name 'robodoc' as his heart rate remained virtually unchanged throughout the entire operation. Despite his commitment to research-based management of spinal conditions, where he was happy to discuss the merits or otherwise of a particular form of management, Nick had an aversion to committees and where possible demonstrated his commitment to a particular cause by actions rather than words. In addition he had no strong political affiliation but was driven by what he felt was the best decision in his colleagues' or patients' interests. This was made evident by the many tributes by fellow surgeons which poured in from the UK, Europe and even the USA, as well as messages from appreciative patients expressing their gratitude not only for his operative skills but for his ability to listen and communicate. His family recall that he 'never wasted a moment', that he was constantly seeking out new challenges, physical and intellectual, both in his professional life and in his leisure time and how the pursuit of some of the riskier ventures often ended in a visit to the local casualty department. They remember the wonderful but inevitably exhausting family holidays, where sitting on a beach with a book was never an option. His boundless energy led him into a wide range of interests and activities, which included off-shore sailing (he owned a boat and had passed the yacht master exam), flying (he held a pilot's licence), scuba diving, cycling, walking in and around the New Forest where he lived, furniture building, ornithology (whilst a student in East London he cared for an injured kestrel and eventually trained it to fly to the lure, transporting it by bus to the open space of Wanstead Flats) and more recently astronomy. To this must be added of course his fateful passion for motorbikes. Nick married Alison (née Rigby), a qualified nurse who also trained at the London Hospital, a week after he qualified. They had two daughters, Catherine and Alexandra, and a son, Henry. He died in a motorcycle accident in the New Forest on 23 March 2012. He was 53. His family survived him.