John Bruce was born in Dalkeith on 6 March 1905. There is no record of his early education. He graduated with honours from the University of Edinburgh in 1928. His first resident appointments were at the Royal Infirmary and the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh, and he then worked as an assistant in a Grimsby general practice before passing the Edinburgh FRCS in 1932. Returning to Edinburgh he became clinical tutor in the Royal Infirmary under Professor John Fraser and won the Syme surgical fellowship for a thesis on congenital dislocation of the hip. He became assistant surgeon to the Royal Infirmary with charge of out-patients in 1935. For the next few years he and the late Ian Aird ran a highly successful course for the Edinburgh Fellowship which had no primary examination in those days. As a TA officer he was called up on the outbreak of war in 1939 as a surgical specialist with 205 Scottish General Hospital. He served during the short campaign in Norway when he was mentioned in despatches, and then he was promoted officer in charge of a surgical division in the Far East. He was appointed consultant surgeon to 14th Army, with the rank of Brigadier, first in South East Asia Command, and then in Burma where he was responsible for the introduction of small surgical teams in the forward areas. He was awarded the CBE (Mil) on demobilisation in 1945. On returning to Edinburgh in 1946, he concentrated on building up the surgical division of the Western General Hospital. Later, with the advent of the National Health Service, together with Dr Wilfrid Card, he built up a joint gastroenterology unit. He also had a particular interest in breast carcinoma and was a fine general surgeon. During his pre-war days with James Fraser, they had shared a common interest in the pathology and surgery of bones and joints. Not surprisingly his surgical papers were wide-ranging and he contributed chapters to a number of surgical textbooks. He conjointly wrote a first edition of the *Manual of surgical anatomy* and later prepared the second edition himself. He was an outstanding and vivid surgical teacher, had a highly developed clinical acumen and was an expert surgical craftsman. A lecturer in surgery to the University of Edinburgh from 1946 to 1956, he then succeeded Sir James Learmonth in the Regius Chair of Clinical Surgery at the Royal Infirmary. Making no claims to be a surgical scientist, he nevertheless had the gift of recognising what was important to the future progress of surgery. He was chiefly responsible for the foundation of the *Journal of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh* in 1955, and was its editor for twenty years up to the time of his death. As well as acting as an examiner in his own city, he also examined in Glasgow, St Andrew's, Liverpool, Oxford and Hong Kong, and for the National University of Ireland, the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and the South African College of Surgeons. John Bruce's national and chief international contributions to surgery followed his appointment as Regius Professor in 1956, and his election as President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh from 1957 to 1962. During and after this period he became an inveterate surgical traveller: he was visiting professor and lecturer to universities and surgical societies in the USA, Canada, Denmark and southern Africa. He gave many eponymous lectures overseas as well as in the British Isles and was Sir Arthur Sims Commonwealth Travelling Professor to Australasia in 1966. Apart from the honorary degrees of universities and honorary fellowship of surgical colleges recorded above, he was an honorary member of a number of societies and associations abroad. Having been Honorary Colonel to the 205 Scottish General Hospital (TA) from 1967 to 1971, he was consulting surgeon to the Scottish Command and a member of the Medical Advisory Boards of the Army and RAF. His further presidencies included the Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland 1965; the James IV Association of Surgeons 1966-69; the British Cancer Council 1966-1975; the Eastern Surgical Society of America 1966-67 and the International Federation of Surgical Colleges. He was Honorary Surgeon to HM The Queen in Scotland from 1966 to 1975, having received the accolade of knight bachelor in 1963. But Sir John was an eminently sociable person who loved nothing better than the company of his peers as well as that of his junior colleagues. A man of prodigious energy and stamina, he would think nothing of sitting up far into the night with his whisky and with lively and scintillating conversation. Life with him was never dull and he was a superb surgical ambassador who took great pride in the city of Edinburgh, its University and Royal College of Surgeons, and in the world-wide brotherhood of surgery. He married Mary Whyte Craig in 1935. Though they had no children theirs was a stable and happy home where many memorable friendships were cultivated. Having successfully recovered from a restorative resection for carcinoma of the rectum in 1968, he later developed a second carcinoma of the colon from which he died on 30 December 1975, being survived by his wife.