John Burgess was a consultant surgeon in Syracuse, New York state. He was born in Woodford Green, Essex, on 20 July 1935, the son of Phillip Stanley Douglas Burgess, a bank official, and Emily Mabel née Oliver. From Brookland’s Preparatory School he entered Bancroft’s School, Woodford Green, and then went on to receive his medical education at the London Hospital. After qualifying and junior posts, he spent two years, from 1960 to 1962, in the RAMC, reaching the rank of captain. On demobilisation he held posts at the Birmingham Accident Hospital and then at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School at Hammersmith. From 1964 to 1969 he was a senior house officer and then a surgical registrar at St Helier Hospital, Carshalton. In 1969 he went to the Mayo Clinic as a research assistant, where he wrote a thesis on the denervation of the cat oesophagus. He was invited to stay on to do a surgical residency until 1972, when he became a general surgeon in Syracuse, New York state. There he remained until he partially retired in 1992, remaining as a consultant to the local prison service. Burgess married Marie Bradfield, a nurse, in 1962. They had two sons, Ashley and Guy, neither of whom went into medicine. A keen rugby football player at school and medical college, he took up ice hockey in Minnesota, and continued to cycle and play tennis. His chief interest was motor racing; he was a member of the Sports Car Club of America, surviving a major crash in 1988. He died on Christmas Day 2008.