Jack Carl Rudolf Hindenach was born in Christchurch, New Zealand, on 19 May 1905, the son of Carl Rudolf Hindenach, a printing engineer. He was educated at Richmond Primary School, Christchurch Boys' High School and Otago University, where he was a junior scholar. He obtained distinction in his first MB and came to England on a travelling scholarship in 1930, with MD (NZ) and was awarded the Hallett Prize in 1931. He held posts at Great Ormond Street, the West London, and Hampstead General Hospitals and Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children and was influenced by Sir Lancelot Barrington Ward and Blundell Bankart. He passed the FRCS in 1935. He was appointed consultant orthopaedic surgeon to the West London Hospital and was President of the West London Medico-Chirurgical Society and secretary of the Orthopaedic Section of the Royal Society of Medicine. He was a double blue in rugby and athletics at Otago and was in the All-Black trials in 1928. He wrote on the cerebellum of *Sphenodon punctatum* in the *Journal of anatomy*, 1931, 65, 283-318. He married in 1947 Gertrude (Trudie) Aphra Willis, a consultant anaesthetist who had served as a Major in the RAMC. They had no children. His wife survived him when he died on 28 August 1983 aged 78 years.