Son of William Wright Shaw, grandson of Thomas Shaw of St Thomas's Hospital and tenth in line from William Shaw, surgeon of Shaw Place, Heath Charnock in Lancashire, 1479, Ronald Cunliffe Shaw was born on 27 February 1899. His mother was Florence Hunt, daughter of George Dawson Hunt, a surgeon of Lonsdale who had served on one of the Franklin relief expeditions. He was educated at Kirkham Grammar School, Manchester University and St Bartholomew's Hospital. His studies were interrupted by the outbreak of the first world war, where he became a Surgeon-Probationer in the RNVR, serving in HMS *Trident* on the Dover Patrol and in HMS *Hornet* with the sixth Destroyer Flotilla. After the war he completed his studies in Manchester, winning the Tom Jones Surgical Research Scholarship for his work entitled *Tissue change and the autonomic system*, and was much influenced by Sir Geoffrey Jefferson, Garnett Wright and Sir William Thorburn. He gained the MSc in 1934. He was consultant surgeon to Preston Royal Infirmary from which position he published a number of significant papers which expressed his abiding interest in neurosurgery. He had many extra-curricular interests especially in archaeology, history and genealogy. He was life Vice-President of the Royal Agricultural Society, member of the Council of the Lancashire Parish Register Society, and published articles on historical and archaeological topics. He married Miss Radcliffe in 1922, but had no children. He died on 20 April 1977, aged 78 years.