Frantz Langlais was chairman of the orthopaedic department at University Hospital Sud, Rennes, France. He was born in 1942 in Plouër-sur-Rance, Brittany, the son of a general practitioner. He trained in orthopaedic surgery in Paris under Robert Merle d'Aubigné, Jean Gossett and Michel Postel, and then joined the University Hospital of Rennes. In 1979 he became professor of orthopaedic surgery, and in 1983 he was appointed chairman of the orthopaedic and trauma department. At Rennes he encouraged younger colleagues to develop specialised areas, including bone banking, arthroscopic surgery and microsurgery. His clinical work focused on arthroplasty of the hip and knee, particularly revision arthroplasty, and also on oncological surgery and allografts. He was in charge of the laboratory of experimental surgery at the University of Rennes and scientific director of the biomaterials and biomechanics laboratory. He published widely, in English and French, and was a lecturer or visiting professor in more than 40 countries. He was a member of numerous French and international organisations, including the French Académie de Chirurgie and Académie Nationale de Médecine, the International Hip Society and the French, European and North American Societies of Musculo-skeletal Oncology and of Orthopaedic Research. He became a fellow of Royal College of Surgeons in 2003. In 1989 he was president of the International Society of Limb Salvage and of the European Association for Musculoskeletal Transplantation in 1992. When he died he was president-elect of the French Society of Orthopaedic and Trauma Surgery and of EFORT, the European Federation of National Orthopaedic and Trauma Associations, of which he had been general secretary and then vice president. Frantz Langlais was killed in a car accident on 16 June 2007 as he was driving home from a postgraduate teaching session in La Baule, west France. He was 65. He was survived by his wife Mireille and their two sons Jonathan and Stéphane.