Thomas Powell was born on 13 July 1923 at Resolven in South Wales, the son of a miner who took up insurance work when forced to give up mining owing to ill health at the age of 40. He was educated at Aberystwyth County School and Edinburgh University and graduated with honours in 1945, winning the Murdoch-Brown Medal in medicine in the same year. In 1946 he went to Cambridge, after working in house posts at Carlisle and Edinburgh and, having passed the Primary FRCS and won the Hallett prize in 1948, decided to specialise in neurosurgery. He continued his clinical training in Edinburgh with Norman Dott and at Hammersmith with Ian Aird. He took his Final FRCS examination in 1950 and in the next year went to Oxford to work with Hugh Cairns. As there was no vacancy at first in Cairns's programme, Powell went to work under Le Gros Clark in the department of human anatomy, and after Cairns died Powell decided to stay in anatomy, where he spent the rest of his career. He was elected a Fellow of St John's College Oxford in 1963 and retired in 1990. He died on 8 February 1996, leaving a wife, Isabelle, a son, Philip, daughter Rosalind, and two granddaughters.