Hugh Stevens was an orthopaedic surgeon in New Zealand. He was born in Invercargill, on the South Island, where his father was a schoolmaster. The family eventually moved to Oxford, in North Canterbury, where Stevens was educated. He also went to school at Sumner and attended Christchurch Boys’ High School. He studied medicine at Otago University, graduating in 1958. He was one of the first house surgeons at the new Princess Margaret Hospital in Christchurch. In the early 1960s he went to the UK to specialise in orthopaedics, training in London, Southampton and at Oswestry. He gained his FRCS in 1964. In 1966 he returned to Christchurch as a full-time surgeon to the North Canterbury Hospital Board. Three years later he gained his fellowship of the Australasian College, and in 1970 spent three months at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital. In Christchurch he established the first paediatric clinic in the region for children with musculo-skeletal disorders, while also working as a consultant surgeon in the public hospital system. From 1970 he was a surgeon at the artificial limb centre. He was an orthopaedic examiner for the FRACS and then senior NZ orthopaedic examiner from 1991 to 1993. From 1989 to 1991 he was vice president of the New Zealand Orthopaedic Association, and president of the Paediatric Orthopaedic Society of New Zealand from 1995 to 1997. He was married twice. He had five children from his first marriage, which broke up in 1973. Three years later he married Marie South. In 1980 they moved out of Christchurch, to Prebbleton. He became interested in horses, and was a committee member of the New Zealand Metropolitan Trotting Club, and was the successful part-owner of a race horse. He also bred poll dorset sheep. He died in December 2006.