Prabhakar Shankar Phatak, known as 'Prabhu', was a consultant general surgeon at the Whittington Hospital. He was born in Pusad, Maharashtra, India, on 20 March 1936, the son of Shankar Ganesh Phatak, a lawyer, and Uma Phatak née Kelkar, a housewife. His mother's father was a doctor. He attended the local government high school, matriculating with first class honours and five distinctions. He then studied sciences at Vidarbha Mahavidyalaya College in Amravati and joined Nagpur Medical College in 1954. He qualified MB BS in 1960. In 1961 he went to the UK for further training, and gained his FRCS in 1967. He was a registrar at Bishop's Stortford, Queen Mary's, Sidcup, and at the Whittington Hospital in London. He was appointed as a consultant surgeon at the Whittington, and later worked in Dudley and Luton. In 1967 he married Jean McKinnon, who later became a GP. They had two children, a daughter, Nilima, a consultant haematologist, and a son, Devendra, and five grandchildren. Phatak died on 24 December 2011, aged 75.