Ahmed Zaki El Ghatit was born in Egypt on 2 October 1931, the eighth child of Aly, a lawyer, and Fatma. He was educated at the College des Frères and at Cairo University, graduating MB, BCh in 1955. He passed the FRCS (and MRCS) examinations in 1964 and FRCS Ed in 1963 . He worked at the London Hospital under Vernon Thompson and Geoffrey Flavell until 1969 when he went to practise in Chicago, and in 1970 in the Spinal Cord Injury Service at the Veterans' Administration Hospital, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, becoming assistant Professor of the Medical College of Wisconsin. He was a founding member of the International Medical Society of Paraplegia, the American Board of Spinal Cord Injury, the International Association for the Study of Pain, the Rehabilitation Engineering Society of North America, and also a member of the Society of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland. He married Nana Nehad in 1956 and they had two sons, Aly and Alaa. He was 52 years old when he died of a brain tumour on 7 November 1983.