Philip Fulford was born in Bideford, Devon, on 20 September 1930. He was the first member of his family to enter the medical profession. His father Philip John Venton Fulford was a draper. His mother was Hilda Mary Stephens née Gigg. He was educated at Bideford Grammar School, where he became head boy and won a scholarship to University College, London. There he did an honours BSc in anatomy under J Z Young, and won the Goldsmiths travelling scholarship. After house appointments at University College Hospital, he joined the Royal Navy to do his National Service, where he carried out research into deep diving and submarine rescue medicine. He took on a permanent commission in 1955 and received his surgical training at the Royal Naval Hospitals in Plymouth and Portsmouth. During this time, he spent a year at the Hammersmith Hospital under Ian Aird and Peter Martin, before being appointed senior surgical specialist. In 1965 he did the MCh course in orthopaedics at Liverpool. In 1966, he was posted to Malta, where he undertook the whole range of surgery. In 1967 he was appointed consultant orthopaedic surgeon to the Royal Naval Hospital, Haslar, Gosport, and in 1969 was appointed Professor of Naval Surgery, a position he held until 1975. In 1982 he retired as Surgeon Captain, to become full-time consultant orthopaedic surgeon to Queen Alexandra's Hospital, Portsmouth, and honorary consultant and senior lecturer at Southampton General Hospital. Between 1967 and 1977 he was medical officer to the Queen during her overseas tours. Philip was active on the editorial board of the *Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery*, of which he became deputy editor and then full-time editor. He published extensively on stress fractures and disorders of the shoulder and knee. He was a founder member of the Committee of Publishing Ethics. In 1953 he married Jean Vida Davidson. They had two sons and two daughters. Sally and John followed their father into the Royal Navy, and Simon became a Fellow of this College, and is a consultant urologist. Philip Fulford died, after a long illness, on 11 April 2000.