William (Bruce) Conolly was a pioneering hand surgeon. Born in Molong, New South Wales on 1 February 1935, he was the eldest son of William Arnold Conolly, a doctor who was responsible for founding the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. His mother Ruth née King was a direct descendant of Governor Phillip King. After attending the Sydney Church of England Grammar School he studied at the Sydney University Medical School graduating MB BS in 1959. While there he won the Haswell prize in his first year and the Credit prize in his final year. For his National Service he trained with the Royal Australian Air Force. After house jobs at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital from 1959 to 1960 he took up the post of tutor in anatomy and pathology at the University of Sydney for a year where he was mentored by Sir John Loewenthall. In the early 1960s he travelled to the UK and worked in a Liverpool hospital with Charles Alexander Wells and John Alfred Shepherd. He passed the fellowship of the college in 1963, became a fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in 1965 and the American College of Surgeons in 1971. In America he worked with John Englebert Dunphy and F. William Blaisdell at the University of California in San Francisco. On his return to Sydney he became a consultant surgeon at the Sydney Hospital and was the driving force behind their world renowned hand unit. It was the first of its kind in Australia and for this he was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 1994. He was a founder member of the Australian Hand Club of which he became president from 1996 to 1998. In the UK he had been a lecturer to the St John Ambulance and he continued to do this for the Australian branch. Over the years he developed a strong relationship with Myanmar and from 2000 onwards Bruce and his wife Dr Joyce Conolly made frequent visits there. After his notional retirement from medical practice in 2013 they set up the Myanmar Australia Conolly Foundation as a humanitarian organisation with the aim of improving the country’s medical education. While there he lectured to Myanmar doctors and nurses and the couple often visited remote villages to carry out informal consultations with those who had no hope of seeing a doctor. He had a special relationship with Yangon General Hospital and donated to them significant books from his personal library. He married Dr Joyce Lavan in January 1966; both her parents were also medically qualified. They had four children: John, Christine, Bruce and Sarah. At University he had won a blue for tennis and squash and he continued to play both games into his retirement – a friend remembers him playing much younger players at the Australian Club in Yangon in the early 2000s. In private he was a deeply religious man. He died on 21 February 2017 aged 82, survived by his wife and family.