Mark Viney Braimbridge was a consultant cardiac surgeon at St Thomas' Hospital, London. He was the son of Clifford Viney Braimbridge CBE, MVO, MA, FRCS Edin, DTM&H who, after serving in the first world war, spent all his life as a surgeon in Kenya. For many years he was the only qualified surgeon in government practice and was known as the father of surgery in East Africa. His mother Jane Murray née Southwell died in 1930 when Mark was only six years old. After studying medicine at Cambridge he qualified MB BChir in 1951 and won the Brackenbury scholarship in surgery at St Bartholomew’s Hospital. He then did house jobs at the Brompton Hospital and the London Chest Hospital. In the USA he worked at Stanford University Hospital in San Francisco on a Heller fellowship. He passed the fellowship of the college in 1954 and was Hunterian professor in 1963. A pioneer of heart surgery and a keen researcher he published widely on the subject including two important books *Lecture notes on cardiology* with James Samuel Fleming (Oxford, Blackwell Scientific, 2nd ed 1977) and *Postoperative cardiac intensive care* (Oxford, Blackwell Scientific, 3rd ed 1981). After retirement he threw himself into a new life in horticulture and founded the European Boxwood and Topiary Society, contributing many articles to its magazine *Toparious*. He also greatly enjoyed travelling and continued to do so even when he began to suffer from a gradual loss of hearing and balance. He died on 31 October 2016 aged 92, survived by his wife Elizabeth; children Fiona, Charles, Laura and Sophie; grandchildren Fergus, Georgia, Bertie, Charlie, Miranda, Crispin, Ella, Lula, and Amelia; stepchildren Carolyn, Michael and Raymond and step-grandchildren Oscar and Luke.