Robert Grainger was born at Ballynickel, Co Down, on 21 December 1902 and educated at Queen's University, Belfast, graduating in 1925 and serving as senior demonstrator of anatomy in the Medical School. He became a Fellow of the Irish and English Colleges of Surgeons in 1930, and was appointed resident medical officer at the Bolingbroke and All Saints' Hospitals, London. He settled in general practice at Berkhamsted, and was appointed honorary surgeon to the West Herts Hospital. He held this post for nearly forty years, concentrating entirely on surgery after the first few years. He had wide interests, in urology as well as traumatic and orthopaedic surgery. He brought his hospital up to a high standard, and with the coming of the National Health Service in 1948 it became the surgical centre of its group. He was a good teacher, who attracted keen young men to his service, and a shrewd, firm administrator. He was consultant surgeon also to St Paul's Hospital, Hemel Hempstead and to Leavesden Hospital. Grainger was a man of solid, sincere, informed common-sense and wise judgment, not without humour. He died on 4 September 1970 aged 67, survived by his wife and their two daughters.