John Connolly, always known as 'Jack', was the founding chair of the department of surgery at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), an internationally admired academic surgeon and a noted anglophile. He was born on 21 May 1923 in Nebraska to Earle and Gertrude Connolly, and was inspired by his father, a surgeon, to pursue a career in medicine. An able student at school, after military service in the US Army Corps he attended both university and medical school at Harvard, qualifying in 1948. There followed a glittering career. His early training was at Stanford University Hospitals, California, where he was greatly influenced by Emile Holman, the chief of surgery. Having himself spent time in the UK, it was Holman who, in 1952, recommended that Connolly spend a year on the professorial unit at St Bartholomew's Hospital with Sir James Paterson Ross. This was the beginning of a love affair with Great Britain. Another surgeon in training at Barts in the early fifties was John Kinmonth, subsequently professor at St Thomas', and he and Jack remained lifelong friends, each in due course becoming visiting professors in the other's academic department. Jack then returned to Stanford for a year as chief resident in 1953, followed by a spell as a fellow in pathology, before moving to the east coast and becoming a resident in thoracic surgery at Bellevue Hospital, New York in 1955. The next year saw Jack as a chief resident in thoracic and cardiovascular surgery at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, New York. In 1957, he returned to Stanford as an associate professor for eight years, where he was both a Bank of America-Giannini Foundation fellow and a distinguished Markle scholar in academic medicine. In 1965 he was appointed as the founding professor and chief of surgery at University of California, Irvine. During his 50 years at UCI he pioneered numerous techniques in the fields of cardiovascular surgery and peripheral vascular surgery, including the development of a mechanical pump for heart bypass surgery. He also performed the first combined kidney-pancreas transplant on the west coast of America. He published 35 chapters in textbooks and more than 500 papers in peer reviewed journals, was visiting professor in more than 30 universities worldwide, from Japan to Sweden, China to Australia, and gave numerous named lectures, including a Hunterian (1985) and a Kinmonth (1987) at the Royal College of Surgeons. He was president of the International Cardiovascular Society in 1977 and was made an honorary fellow of the Vascular Society of Great Britain and Ireland in 2003. The John E Connolly Surgical Society was formed in 1975 to foster mentorship and camaraderie among his former residents, and continues to meet annually at the American College of Surgeons' annual congress. Throughout his career he was closely involved with the American College, becoming a governor in 1964, a regent in 1973 and vice-president in 1983. After he retired from clinical work, he continued attending his department (now named after him) to teach young surgeons until his late eighties. In 1967, he married Virginia May (née Hartman) and they had three children - Peter, John and Sarah. His main interests outside of surgery and his family were golf and opera. He was also a great clubman, belonging to at least six clubs in different cities in the USA. Jack Connolly loved visiting Great Britain and became well known to many UK surgeons and to the College, often staying in the Nuffield. He prided himself that he knew personally every English College president over some 50 years, from James Paterson Ross onwards; as a consequence, he was frequently entertained in the president's lodge. He was always keen to learn the latest surgical gossip from the UK, even when he became increasingly frail as he entered his nineties. He died peacefully of natural causes on 20 January 2016, aged 92.