John Bulman was born on 5 March 1911, in Burnopfield, Co Durham, the second child and first son of Harrison Francis Bulman, a mining engineer, and of his wife Norah (née Jones). His uncle was Beresford Jones, FRCS, surgeon to the Kent and Canterbury Hospital. After preparatory school in Warwickshire, he went on to public school at Rugby, where he read classics. At Trinity College, Cambridge, he took his BA with first class honours in parts I and II of the Natural Sciences Tripos and was appointed research scholar. His medical training was at St Thomas's Hospital, London, after which he graduated MB BCh in 1937 at Cambridge. He then held posts as house surgeon at the Kent and Canterbury Hospital and at the Royal Marsden Hospital and as registrar at the Royal Northern Hospital, before the outbreak of war. He was particularly influenced by McNeill Love at the Royal Northern. From 1939 he held an emergency commission as Captain in the RAMC. He served for four years in North Africa and was present at Tobruk and Benghazi, after which he attended the Military Hospital at Shaftesbury. He was then posted for a year to France (Bayeaux), Belgium (Antwerp) and Holland. After demobilisation he took the FRCS in 1946 and entered general practice in Wallington, Surrey, in 1947. He continued to practice surgery and was appointed senior hospital medical officer at the War Memorial Hospital, Carshalton, and the Wilson Hospital, Mitcham. Towards the end of his career he was appointed consultant surgeon to the St Helier Group of Hospitals, and gave up general practice. He retired in 1976. Bulman's main interest was in his work, to which he devoted himself unstintingly. He had little time for publications, but contributed practical papers to medical and surgical journals on strangulated mesenteric hernia of the caecum, acute phlegmonous colitis and the use of floss nylon in the repair of inguinal herniae. Apart from surgery his interests lay in dinghy sailing and bird watching to which he devoted himself on retirement in Norfolk. In 1938 he married Maida (née Hunter). They had two daughters and two sons, both doctors. He died after a long illness on 23 February 1985, aged 74.