John David Wade was a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Born on 2 May 1914 in Cardiff, he was the eldest son of James Owen David Wade OBE FRCS and his wife Kate née Jones who was a domestic science teacher. His mother’s father was a Baptist minister and his father, a consultant surgeon at Cardiff Royal Infirmary, came from a medical family. Of his father’s three brothers one, Thomas Wade, was Chief Medical Officer for Wales, another, Earnest, was a GP in Newport, Monmouthshire and Oscar became chief pharmacist at the London Hospital. John’s younger brother the late James Stanley Hilary (Larry) FRCS was a consultant general surgeon at Cardiff Royal Infirmary; his brother Owen was a consultant physician in Birmingham and the third, Thomas H Wade, was a GP in Harley Street. Later he recalled that one of his earliest memories was of his father dressing the wounds of a soldier at Whitchurch Military Hospital at the end of the First World War. All four brothers assisted their father when operating in various Welsh valley hospitals during their training, although only Larry and he became surgeons. He also had six medically qualified cousins including one, John Wade Thomas, also a GP in Newport. Educated at Repton School from 1928 to 1933, he then studied medicine at Emmanuel College, Cambridge University and trained at University College Hospital (UCH), London, graduating MB BCh in 1939. Doing house jobs at UCH he was mentored by Julian Taylor and Arthur Gardham. Briefly he worked at Cardiff Royal Infirmary as a registrar with David John Harries. He enlisted in the RAMC in early 1940 and served as an RMO initially in a general hospital at Offranville, near Dinard, France before being moved to Brittany and then evacuated from St Malo. For a while he was posted to a camp near Skipton in Yorkshire where he said he was compelled to learn to ride a motorbike to carry out his duties. While in London during the Blitz he obtained the fellowship of the college and was mentored by Sir Ronald Raven. From 1942 to 1946 he was a graded surgeon and surgical specialist serving in the Middle East. By circuitous means – a liner from Glasgow to Durban, another to Bombay and a troop ship - he ended up in Basrah, Iraq and from there was posted to Shaiba in the Lebanon where he ran a heat stroke centre. After the landings in Italy his division was moved to Taranto in the toe of Italy where he was, he recalled, billeted with an Italian ophthalmic surgeon whose family were very friendly.* On his discharge from the Army he returned to Cardiff Royal Infirmary as a senior surgical registrar until he was offered a post as senior registrar at Sully Tuberculosis Hospital in Cardiff under Norman Barrett and William Paton Cleveland from the Brompton Hospital. In 1950 he spent a year on a Dorothy Temple Cross fellowship in tuberculosis with the Medical Research Council and a further year as a clinical and research fellow at the Harvard University Hospital in the USA. Appointed consultant surgeon in cardiothoracic surgery at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary in 1952, he remained there until his retirement in 1978. A pioneer of open heart surgery he was involved in the first such operations in Edinburgh. During his time there he undertook research on cardiac surgery with Andrew Logan and Sir Michael Woodruff and published many papers on the topic. He was an examiner at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and also examined for the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. Outside medicine he enjoyed dinghy sailing, an enthusiasm he had developed while at Cambridge and kept up through membership of various sailing clubs throughout his life. He built his own 38 ft Trintella sailing boat in his Cambridge garden and sailed her to Dale, near Milford Haven, the West coast of Ireland and to France. Golf was also a passion which he shared with his colleagues in Edinburgh and he was a member of the Luffness Golf Club on the Firth of Forth. As a family they had enjoyed camping holidays in Europe and he went windsurfing with his grandchildren. He met his wife, Agnes E Summerfield in Italy at the Bari Military Hospital where she was serving as a nurse. They married on 14 February 1946 and had three daughters, Rosemary, Hilary (named after his surgeon brother) and Susan. On retirement they moved to Cambridge and spent five years nursing their daughter Rosemary, who died of a brain tumour in 1984. He undertook locum work at Exeter Hospital from 1977 to 1984. Latterly, when he was aged between 70 and 80, he travelled overseas doing locums in Montserrat, St Helena and Vanuatu. He died on 15 June 2013 aged 99 years and was survived by Agnes, Hilary and Susan, eight grandchildren and two adopted great grandchildren who were of Chinese origin.