Richard Butler qualified MRCS LRCP from Cambridge and St Thomas's Hospital in 1927 and he spent his early postgraduate years gaining experience in general and orthopaedic surgery, working for Bristow, Perkins and Trethowan. He became FRCS in 1928 and took the MCh in 1933, winning the Robert Jones Gold Medal for his work with H J Seddon on Pott's disease of the spine. He then proceeded MD. He was appointed honorary surgeon to Addenbrooke's Hospital in 1932 with an interest in orthopaedic surgery but he very soon gave up general surgery to devote all his time to orthopaedics. He joined the RAMC in 1939, serving in France and in the Cambridge Hospital, Aldershot, but when the Leys School, Cambridge was taken over to house a 150 bed orthopaedic and peripheral nerve unit, he was demobilised to lead the work there. He built up a unit, after the war, using a small decontamination centre in the old Addenbrooke's car park until the opening of the new hospital in 1962 provided a modern department, but he continued to use, in his private practice, a set of osteotomes bought in a street market for 1/6d when he was a house surgeon. He was President of the Orthopaedic Section of the Royal Society of Medicine in 1955. He was fond of outdoor pursuits and was an authority on fen life and culture and the local bird life. He married Anna Sellors in 1930 but she died in 1965, shortly before he retired and he suffered a cerebrovascular accident soon afterwards. He died on 21 November 1982, survived by his daughter and two sons.