Bryan Hartop Burns was born on 14 December 1896, at Higham Park, Rushden, Northants. He was the elder of the two sons of Hartop Burns, farmer, and Florence Ann, née Fuller. Both parents came from farming and landowning families in Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire. He was educated first at Kimbolton School (1904-1909) then at Wellingborough School (1909-1914). On leaving school he joined the Northamptonshire Regiment in January 1915 as a Second Lieutenant and served throughout the first world war, rising to the rank of Captain. This period included a short spell in Ireland during the disturbances in Dublin. On demobilisation he went up to Clare College, Cambridge, in 1919 to read medicine. He took his BA in 1922 and continued his studies at St George's Hospital Medical School. There he took the Conjoint qualification in 1923. In 1924 he won the Brackenbury Prize for medicine and in 1925 the Allingham Prize for surgery. He took his Cambridge degree in 1925 and in 1926 the FRCS. He was appointed resident assistant surgeon at St George's in 1928 and later general surgeon until his retirement in 1962. His main interest was, however, in orthopaedic surgery and he became orthopaedic surgeon to St George's during the same period. He was registrar to the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital. He was also appointed surgeon to the Belgrave Hospital for Children and to the Royal Masonic Hospital. Burns named Sir Claude Frankau, Sir Crisp English and W H Trethowan as surgeons who had particularly influenced him, but Blundell Bankhart and Emslie stimulated his interest in orthopaedics. He published numerous papers on orthopaedic subjects and described the first insertion of a pin for fracture of the neck of the femur under X-ray guidance at a meeting of the Orthopaedic Section of the Royal Society of Medicine in 1933. During the second world war he was director of orthopaedic surgery at Botley's Park War Hospital (later St Peter's), Chertsey, Surrey. This was one of the first receiving hospitals for casualties after D-Day. Here he had ample opportunity to develop his views on the importance of internal fixation of fractures for the purpose of early mobilisation. He had been treating upper femoral fractures with a long Smith Petersen nail inserted from above, and rapidly adopted the Küntscher nail for the purpose. He was a skillful innovator, with Burns plates and Burns radius-holding forceps and a self-retaining screw-driver to his credit. He was in the forefront of British hip surgery and made important advances in vertebral disc surgery with R H Young. After the war he published, with his friend and colleague V H Ellis, the work for which he may be best remembered and which has influenced generations of students: *Recent advances in orthopaedic surgery* (1946). He was an impressive and revered teacher of undergraduates and graduates. His distinctions included being a member of the Court of Examiners of the Royal College of Surgeons (1942-45), President of the Orthopaedic Section of the Royal Society of Medicine, Fellow of the British Orthopaedic Association and member of SICOT and the Société Française Orthopédique. On retirement he was appointed Emeritus Surgeon to St George's, and was able to devote more time to his interest in golf and cricket. He married in 1938 the Hon Dorothy Garthwaite, daughter of Lord Duveen. There were no children. He died after a short illness on 6 December 1984, eight days before his 88th birthday. His wife died shortly after, on 12 April 1985.