Shafik Shalaby was born in Cairo, Egypt, on 17 March 1898, the son of Mina Shalaby who was a Chief Judge. After primary and secondary education in government schools he entered the Faculty of Medicine of Cairo University and graduated with honours, the third in his class, in 1919. All his junior surgical appointments were held in the Kasr El-Aini University Hospital in Cairo and among his notable tutors were Professor F C Madden FRCS, the last British Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Professor Ali Ibrahim FRCS, the first Egyptian Dean. In 1925 he was awarded a scholarship to study abroad and came to England where he obtained the FRCS in 1929. Following his return to Cairo he was appointed a tutor and Assistant Professor at the University Hospital, becoming a full Professor in 1947. In 1948 he was elected a Hunterian Professor by the Royal College of Surgeons of England and gave a lecture titled "Amoebic liver abscess". In 1956 he was promoted to Senior Professor of Surgery in the University and held this appointment until his retirement in 1958. He was an enterprising surgeon and enthusiastic teacher who sought to modernise Egyptian surgical practice by introducing new operations and techniques, especially those that he had observed in surgical centres abroad. He was, for example, the first surgeon in Egypt to perform oesophagectomy for cancer of the oesophagus, total laryngectomy and pharyngectomy, pancreato-duodenectomy and the radical hind-quarter operation. Professor Shalaby married in 1934 and he and his wife Shafika had a daughter and a son, Samir, who has now followed his father as Professor of Surgery in Cairo. Professor Shalaby died in Cairo on 4 April 1981.