Brian Roper was born in Sheffield on New Year's Day, 1933. His father, Arnold, was a railway executive, and his mother, Nora Tuxford, was the daughter of a master cutler. He was educated at Chesterfield School and Queen's College, Oxford (where he won the Legge Prize) and on to University College Hospital for his clinical work, qualifying in 1956. After junior posts at UCH he entered the RAMC with a short service commission and became cancer registrar at the Queen Alexandra Military Hospital, Millbank, where he worked closely with Sir Stanford Cade's radiotherapy department at the Westminster Hospital. On leaving the army in 1961 he held registrar posts at UCH and the Metropolitan Hospital in Islington, took the FRCS in 1963 and began to specialise in orthopaedics. He began at UCH on the orthopaedic unit, and then worked under Lipmann Kessel at the Fulham Hospital before becoming registrar at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in 1966, subsequently becoming lecturer at the Institute of Orthopaedics in 1968. There he was much influenced by Sir Herbert Seddon. It was a time when fewer motorcycle injuries meant that there were fewer peripheral nerve lesions, and Seddon suggested to him that nobody was interested in stroke victims, and that this would be a valuable area of research to pursue, with rich opportunities to exploit his skill with tendon transfer and release. It was Seddon who encouraged him to spend a year (in 1970) as a Fellow at Rancho Los Amigos, UCLA, and there he found himself Chief of the Stroke Service. On returning to his post as lecturer he moved on to be Lloyd-Roberts' senior registrar at Great Ormond Street Hospital in May 1971, and was then appointed to the staff of the London Hospital in November 1971, at the instigation of Michael Freeman. At the London Brian Roper devoted his time to paediatric orthopaedics and joint replacement in the upper limb. Unfortunately, like his father, he developed coronary artery disease at a relatively young age and his first bypass operation was in 1984. He underwent a number of cardiac operations, always bouncing back with renewed vigour. He always intended to retire early, and did so in 1992, but was persuaded by his colleagues to stay on, part-time, to do the upper limb surgery. Unfortunately he developed another severe myocardial infarct in March 1993, and died following bypass surgery on 24 April 1993. Brian Roper was an enthusiast of association football, was honorary orthopaedic surgeon to West Ham United, attended all their home fixtures and looked after many professional footballers from all over the country. He was president of the medical students' football club. He was on the editorial board of many orthopaedic journals. A man of tremendous energy, he was a very keen sailor and commodore of the London Hospital Sailing Club, spending many happy hours at Burnham-on-Crouch. He married Jill Michael in 1957 and they had five children: one son died in a childhood accident. Of the four remaining children, Tamzin went into medicine and Sean into dentistry.