Michael Pickering Pick was born on 6 August 1919, the son of Surgeon Rear-Admiral Bryan Pickering Pick and the grandson of T Pickering Pick, surgeon to St George's Hospital and editor of *Gray's Anatomy* from 1883 to 1905. He was educated at Sherborne and entered St Thomas's Hospital Medical School, qualifying in 1942. In the final years of the war he served as Surgeon Sub-Lieutenant in a destroyer which participated in the sinking of the German battleship *Tirpitz* and was wounded during the action. After demobilisation he pursued a career in orthopaedic surgery. He passed the FRCS in 1949 and was registrar at St Peter's Hospital, Chertsey, and senior registrar at St Thomas's Hospital under Rowley Bristow and George Perkins before being appointed consultant orthopaedic surgeon to West Dorset Hospitals, operating at Dorchester and Weymouth. He built up the orthopaedic department at both hospitals and took a particular interest in teaching junior staff. He retired from the hospital staff in 1981 but continued to live in Dorset pursuing his hobby of sailing. He married Ann Nettelfield, a physiotherapist at St Thomas's Hospital and after her death married Jean Blackburn who also pre-deceased him. He died on 14 February 1987 aged 67 after a short illness and is survived by his third wife Pam, and his children Jill and David, by his first marriage. His daughter is a consultant haematologist.