John Farndon was professor and head of surgery at Bristol. He was born on 16 February 1946 in Rotherham, Yorkshire. He was educated at Woodhouse Grammar School, Sheffield, and studied medicine at Newcastle Medical School, where he gained two prizes, a scholarship and a first in anatomy. Ray Scothorne, the professor of anatomy, introduced him to the study of endocrine disease. After junior posts in Newcastle, under Ivan Johnson and Ross Taylor, he spent two years at Duke University, North Carolina, as a research fellow under Sam Wells, which culminated in an MD thesis on phaeochromocytoma. He returned to Newcastle as senior lecturer in surgery, and honorary consultant surgeon, where he increasingly specialised in endocrine and breast surgery. He was appointed professor of surgery and honorary consultant in Bristol in 1988. He made important contributions to the understanding of the way in which phaeochromocytomas released their hormones, thus improving the pre-operative management of these patients. In carcinoma of the breast, he was to characterise those patients who would and would not respond to hormone therapy. He served on many committees, including those dealing with policy, trials, and breast screening, and was editor of the *British Journal of Surgery* from 1992, where he increased the number of reports of randomised controlled trials, and cut back on case reports - efforts which were repaid in the growing international reputation of the journal. He was president-elect of the Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland, and a former President of the British Association of Endocrine Surgeons, and of the Bristol division of the BMA. He was an excellent teacher, chaired the curriculum committee and coordinated students' electives. He was associate clinical director of the Bristol Royal Infirmary when concerns were first raised about paediatric heart surgery, and his efforts were praised in the subsequent report by Ian Kennedy. He was increasingly concerned at the inadequate provision within the NHS for surgical patients, and its knock-on effects on undergraduate and surgical education. Like others in his department, he used his income from private patients to support his research staff. He married Christine Louet, a breast screening nurse, in 1972. They had two sons, Mark (who became a surgeon) and James, and one daughter, Emily. He died from a heart attack on 6 February 2002.