Denis John Wolko Browne was born in Australia on 28 April 1892, and was educated at the King's School, Paramatta, and the University of Sydney, graduating MB in 1914. He came to England with the Anzacs and served throughout the first world war, including Gallipoli. After a period in Liverpool he moved to London to obtain his Fellowship. For his clinical studies he went to the Middlesex and London Hospitals, and took the FRCS in 1922. Then he became resident medical superintendent at the Hospital for Sick Children. He was next appointed consultant in congenital abnormalities to the London County Council, working at Queen Mary's Hospital for Children, Carshalton. In 1928 he joined the honorary staff of the Hospital for Sick Children, which he continued to serve as consultant surgeon until 1957, when he was elected emeritus surgeon. In 1961 he was appointed KCVO, and later in the same year the French Government made him a Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur in recognition of his contribution to the progress of medicine and surgery. Denis Browne's original mind was soon in evidence, and in 1934 in his Arris and Gale lecture he presented his ideas on the development and treatment of talipes. His contributions ranged widely over the surgery of childhood both in practical methods of treatment and in hypotheses of the development of congenital abnormalities; for example, his operation for hypospadias; his simple, sound technique for repair of cleft palate and hare-lip; his advocacy of "controlled movement" in the treatment of talipes and congenital dislocation of the hip; and his clarification of the principles of diagnosis and management of undescended testis and of imperforate anus. Not so well known, perhaps, are his many contributions to the management of less dramatic conditions such as his techniques of meatotomy, his observations on labial adhesions in young girls, and his development of techniques for Ramstedt's operation and for inguinal herniotomy which enabled his registrars reliably to achieve excellent results. His fascination with the details of operative techniques and of suitable instruments for their performance may have drawn attention from more important aspects of his greatness. He was a pioneer of neonatal surgery and in advocating the need for special skills in managing and nursing children as well as in their surgery. The need to look on the child as a whole and to consider treatment in relation to growth and development derived from this. Denis Browne needed to think out each problem for himself from the beginning, and this sometimes made him seem intolerant of the views of others. He persevered in accordance with his convictions even when these cut across the current fashions in specialization. His apparently aloof personality and lack of "small talk" belied his innately kind personality. The development of paediatric surgery in this country owes more to him than to any other individual, as was recognized in the award of the Dawson Williams Prize in 1957 and of the William E Ladd Memorial Medal by the Academy of Pediatrics in the United States. At the Annual Meeting of the British Medical Association in 1952 he was Vice-President of the Section of Child Health. He was President of the British Association of Paediatric Surgeons from 1954 to 1957, having been instrumental in its foundation; honorary fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, and of the International College of Surgeons, and of the International College of Surgeons, of which he was elected co-president of the British section in 1962; and honorary member of the Société Française d'Urologie. He held Hunterian Professorships in 1947-49, 50, 51. Sir Denis lived enthusiastically and had many interests outside his work. He read widely, and gave a paper at the Royal Society of Medicine on Byron's disability based on a careful study of the appliance the poet wore. He loved the country, and shot regularly. In earlier days his tennis took him to Wimbledon - inevitably with his own grip on the racket. In 1927 he married Helen Simpson, the novelist. When the second world war broke out and the hospital became a casualty clearing station they lived in a flat there, and their hospitality will be remembered by many old residents, but in 1940 his wife died. In 1945 he married Lady Moyra Ponsonby. Sir Denis died at his home in Wilton Street on 9 January 1967 after a short illness; he was 74, and was survived by his second wife, and by the son and two daughters of his first marriage. Publications: Hare lip. *Ann Roy Coll Surg Eng* 1949, 5, 169. Symposium on rectal continence. *Proc Roy Soc Med* 1959, 52, 85.