John Francis Rogers Bentley was born in India on 5 March 1920. He entered Guy's Hospital Medical School, qualifying in 1942. After initial house appointments in the Emergency Medical Service at Guy's Hospital and the North Middlesex Hospital he joined the Indian Medical Service, rising to the rank of Captain and serving as a malariologist. After demobilisation he was surgical registrar at King George Hospital, Ilford, passing the FRCS in 1947 and later worked at the London Hospital before going to the Hospital for Sick Children in Great Ormond Street. At that time the paediatric cardiac surgery unit had just been started and he acquired considerable skill in this specialty as well as an interest in the treatment of megacolon and hydrocephalus. He served as resident surgical officer at St Mark's Hositl from 1953 to 1954 before going to Glasgow in 1955 as consultant paediatric surgeon to the Royal Hospital for Sick Children and to the thoracic unit of Mearnskirk General Hospital. While at Glasgow he played an important role in the development of paediatric surgery in the West of Scotland. He was the first to treat oesophageal atresia by replacement with a segment of colon and performed many operations for megacolon. He started a paediatric cardiac surgery unit at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Glasgow and introduced the technique of cardio-pulmonary by-pass for open heart surgery. He was also the first to use the Spitz-Holter valve in the west of Scotland as an effective treatment of hydrocephalus. He passed both the Edinburgh and Glasgow fellowships, trained many young surgeons in the techniques of paediatric surgery, and from 1977 to 1978 served as President of the British Association of Paediatric Surgeons. He retired from practice in 1985 and died on 4 July 1990 aged 70. He is survived by his wife Cecily, a doctor who worked in public health and by four children, three daughters, Jennifer, Sandra and Debbie and a son, Donald.