Robin Ling, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at the Princess Elizabeth Orthopaedic Hospital and Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, was an innovative hip surgeon; his ‘Exeter hip system’ improved the lives of millions of people worldwide. He was born in London on 7 September 1927, the son of William Harold Godfrey Mackwood Ling and Margaret Mona Ling née Price, and grew up in Keighley in Yorkshire. Both his parents and his grandfather were doctors. Ling was educated at Chelmsford Hall School in Eastbourne and then, in 1940, with his two younger brothers, was sent to British Columbia, Canada, where he attended Shawnigan Lake School on Vancouver Island. After the war, he returned to the UK, where he studied medicine at Magdalen College, Oxford and at St Mary’s Hospital in London. He qualified in 1952. He held house surgeon and house physician posts at St Mary’s and Paddington General hospitals in London, and was then a part-time demonstrator in anatomy at St Mary’s from 1954 to 1955. From 1955 to 1956, he was a senior house officer in general surgery at Harold Wood Hospital, Essex. He then returned to St Mary’s as a casualty surgical officer. From 1956 to 1957 he was a senior house officer at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, and then a registrar in general surgery and urology at the Prince of Wales Hospital, Tottenham, London. After gaining his FRCS in 1957, he returned to Canada, where he was medical director of the emergency department at Vancouver General Hospital. He went back the UK in 1959 to complete his orthopaedic training, as a registrar, senior registrar and research fellow in Edinburgh. In December 1961, he became a consultant at the Princess Margaret Rose Hospital and the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh, but in June 1963 transferred to Exeter as a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at the Princess Elizabeth Orthopaedic Hospital and the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital. At Exeter, he became interested in hip replacement surgery, and worked with Clive Lee, an engineer at the University of Exeter. They developed a tapered hip stem, designed to remain fixed in the skeleton for a longer duration. The first Exeter hip was inserted in 1970 and, with minor changes and adjustments, is still the most frequently used cemented hip replacement in the world. Ling went on to research and develop cementing technologies to improve fixation of the implant. With Tom Sloff from Nijmegen in the Netherlands, he also devised a technique for repairing damage to surrounding bones caused by the loosening of the implant. Ling became an honorary professor of bioengineering at Exeter University. He was president of the British Orthopaedic Research Society from 1979 to 1980, president of the British Orthopaedic Association from 1986 to 1987, president and cofounder of the British Hip Society from 1991 to 1993 and president of the International Hip Society from 1997 to 1998. In 1992, he was awarded an OBE. He held visiting professorships at, among other institutions, Louisiana State University, the University of Arizona, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the University of California at San Francisco, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, the Henry Ford Memorial Hospital, Detroit, Michigan, the University of Iowa, the University of Pittsburgh and the Santa Casa de Misericórdia de São Paulo, Brazil. He enjoyed rugby and sailing. He was a member of the Royal Dart Yacht Club and owned a sailing boat, *Enfin*. In 1955 he married Mary Steedman, a casualty nurse from South Africa, whom he had met at St Mary’s Hospital. She survived him with their two daughters – Jennifer and Katherine – and four grandchildren. Robin Ling died on 9 October 2017. He was 90.