Mohammed Kabiruddin Ahmed was professor and head of the department of surgery at the Medical College and Hospital, Sylhet, Bangladesh. He was born on 31 March 1934 in Sylhet, the son of Mohammed Asghar, a mathematics graduate and a magistrate in the Assam Civil Service, and Umirunnessa née Choudhury, the daughter of a senior police officer in Assam. Ahmed was educated at the Government Boys' School in Sylhet, and went on to study pre-medical science at the MC College, Sylhet, and then medicine at Dacca Medical College. He qualified MB BS in 1956. After a rotating internship in Dacca Medical College Hospital, he was a junior and then a senior house surgeon in the department of obstetrics and gynaecology in the same hospital. He was subsequently a lecturer of anatomy at Dacca Medical College, and later a registrar and resident surgeon in general and casualty surgery at Dacca Medical College Hospital. He then went to the UK to continue his professional training at the Royal College of Surgeons and Guy's Hospital Medical School. He held posts in Warrington, Burnley and Birmingham hospitals and gained his FRCS in 1967. He returned to the subcontinent, as assistant professor of surgery at Mymensingh Medical College Hospital and then as an associate professor of surgery at Sylhet Medical College. From 1977 he was professor and head of the department of surgery at Sylhet Medical College. He served as the principal of Dhaka Medical College and head of the department of surgery for the Dhaka Medical College Hospital from 1990 to 1991. He was the founder of the burns and plastic surgery units at Dhaka Medical College Hospital. After his retirement, he worked as the director of the Holy Family Red Crescent Hospital, Dhaka, as a consulting surgeon at Jahurul Islam Medical College at Bajitpur and as a visiting professor at the Women's Medical College at Uttara, Dhaka. In 1993, he was professor of surgery and anatomy at the Institute of Health Sciences, Gonoshasthaya Kendra, Savar. He was an editorial consultant for the *Pakistan Journal of Surgery* and wrote a number of papers. He was an honorary fellow of the Bangladesh College of Physicians and Surgeons, the American College of Surgeons and the International College of Surgeons. Ahmed was the founder president of the Bangladesh chapter of the International College of Surgeons and president of the Society of Surgeons of Bangladesh. He was the founder president of Health Link International, a forum for continuing medical education. He was also founder and president of Begum Rokeya Women and Child Health Organization, a non-profit organisation promoting the health of disadvantaged women and children in Bangladesh. Outside medicine, his main hobby was travel; he travelled in Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Ireland, UK, Switzerland and Lebanon. While a student he actively participated in the 'language movement' of 1952, advocating the recognition of the Bengali language as an official language in what was then East Pakistan. In 1960 he married Taslima Khatun, a social worker and Montessori teacher. They had two daughters and a son - Nipa, Lopa and Rana. Mohammed Kabiruddin Ahmed died on 9 April 1998. He was 64.