Bruce Hay was born in Auckland, New Zealand on 31 May 1913, the elder son of Douglas Baird Hay and Ethna Cherie Pierce. His father was a sharebroker and his mother was manager of the New Zealand Insurance Company. He was educated at Southwell School, Hamilton, King's College, Auckland, and Otago University, graduating in 1938. After resident appointments in Auckland, he served in the New Zealand Medical Corps in the Middle East and Italy, from 1939 to 1941 rising to the rank of Major. He was made an honorary gunner of the Sixth Field Regiment in recognition of his distinguished service in the field. He returned to New Zealand in 1945 and married Margaret, daughter of Doctor A M Ross of Auckland. They came to England in 1946 and Hay spent five years training in orthopaedic surgery at Guy's and the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital. He was assistant to David Trevor, H J Seddon and Jackson Burrows. In 1951, he was appointed to the staff of Waikato Hospital, Hamilton, and four years later, he became the first private consulting orthopaedic surgeon in Hamilton. In 1966, he became Chairman of Orthopaedics at Waikato, a position he held until his retirement in 1978. Thereafter, he was part-time medical officer to the Accident Compensation Corporation in Hamilton. He was President of the New Zealand Orthopaedic Association from 1970 to 1971, a member of the Dominion Committee of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in New Zealand from 1968 to 1976, and divisional Chairman of the BMA in Waikato in 1967. He was a Waikato Diocesan School Board governor for eleven years and a Southwell School Board trustee for thirty years. Hay was an able mediator and negotiator and a scrupulously fair chairman of many committees. His golf handicap was always in single figures and his garden was a showpiece. He died in Hamilton on 8 September 1985 after a short illness, survived by his wife, his daughter, Katherine, and his son, Tony, who is a general practitioner in Auckland.