Geoffrey Hyman was born in Leeds on 16 August 1908 and educated at Leeds Central High School and Leeds University, where he graduated in 1931. After house appointments at Leeds General Infirmary and the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, Stanmore, he took the FRCS in 1937. During the second world war, in company with J M Fitton, he was responsible for the organization, enlargement, and maintenance of an excellent and essential rehabilitation service at Pinderfields Hospital, Wakefield. In 1946 he was appointed orthopaedic surgeon to the Halifax Hospital Group; Halifax Education Committee; Pinderfields Hospital, Wakefield; Leeds Jewish Hospital; and for the Ministry of Pensions at Chapel Allerton Hospital, Leeds. He was a senior Fellow of the British Orthopaedic Association. Though dogged by ill health in the latter years of his service, he continued to fulfil all his commitments and in 1968 was appointed to the Leeds regional panel of medical appeals tribunals, an assignment he was able to continue after retirement. For him the culmination of his career was his appointment as locum honorary consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Leeds General Infirmary. He had a real interest in the affairs of Israel, which he translated into practical form by working there in an honorary capacity on several occasions, especially in helping war casualties. He worked and lectured at the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem and did a tour of duty at Nahariya on the Israeli Lebanese border. Outside medicine his interests were in the visual arts. He was President of the Halifax Thespians from 1966 to the time of his death and founder and initial secretary of the Halifax and District Civic Trust. He enjoyed collecting antiques particularly the decorative pots of the old apothecaries. He married in 1945 and had two daughters. Some years before his death he had a severe coronary thrombosis, in 1973 a ruptured abdominal aneurysm successfully treated as an emergency by the insertion of an abdominal aortic graft, and finally he succumbed to a second coronary attack on 30 March 1975.