Born in 1875, from 1904 to 1908 he was assistant to Professor C F A Koch at the University Surgical Clinic, Utrecht, after which he was lecturer in operative surgery until 1913. Refusing an invitation to become Professor of Anatomy, he went to Rotterdam as surgeon at Coolsingel Hospital. Here he had a mass of surgical material to deal with and rapidly built up an international reputation, so that in 1920 he was invited to become Professor of Surgery at Amsterdam. The facilities were not as good, but he quickly so organised his department that it became outstanding. A distinguished anatomist, he brought to his surgery, which was catholic in its range, new ideas and techniques. Bone and joint surgery were a major interest, and he devised the operation of blind pegging of the fractured femoral neck with a portion of fibula from the same leg. In October 1940 a German surgical unit took over his hospital, and he with other Dutch doctors was taken as a hostage to Buchenwald concentration camp. He was released in 1941, but on his return to Holland he was dismissed from his hospital; reinstated in 1945, he retired in 1946. He was an Honorary Fellow of the Association of Surgeons, the British Orthopaedic Association and the Royal Society of Medicine, and on 9 January 1946 he was Moynihan Lecturer. He died on 18 August 1954 survived by his wife, two daughters and a son, a graduate of Edinburgh University and a neurosurgeon in Amsterdam.