Max Harrison was a consultant surgeon at the General and Royal Orthopaedic hospitals, Birmingham, and the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital, Oswestry. He was born on 16 March 1922 in Leeds. His father, Barnard Harrison, was an insurance broker; his mother, Rebecca Harrison née Greenberg, was the daughter of a tailor. He attended Cowper Street Council School and Leeds Grammar School, and then went on to medical school at Leeds University. He gained undergraduate prizes in medicine and a scholarship for the clinical part of the course. He qualified in 1944. He held house posts at Leeds General Infirmary. He subsequently trained as an orthopaedic surgeon. He was a second professional assistant at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, Oxford, where he worked with Herbert Seddon and Joseph Trueta. He was then chief assistant in the orthopaedic department, Westminster Hospital, and a senior registrar at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, London. In 1958, he was appointed as a consultant surgeon in Birmingham. His ChM thesis on the blood supply of the femoral head stimulated his interest in the treatment of Perthes' disease and led to numerous publications on conditions related to hip development in childhood and a Hunterian professorship in 1976. He was a founding member of the British Orthopaedic Research Society, a member of the editorial board of *The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery* and of the executive of the British Orthopaedic Association (from 1965 to 1966), and a past president of the Naughton Dunn Club (the West Midlands' orthopaedic association). He was a founder member of the board of trustees of the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital. After his retirement, he continued with medico-legal work. Outside medicine, he was interested in golf and chess. In 1950, he married Valerie Abrahams. They had two daughters, Ruth and Judith, a son, Barney, eight grandchildren and six great grandchildren. Max Harrison died on 22 January 2015. He was 92.