Manohar Janardan Joshi was born on 11 December 1931 in Ratnagiri, India. His father, Janardan Joshi, was a lawyer and social reformer and his mother, Malatibai, was the superintendant of the Girl’s High School in Ratnagiri. The school had been founded by his parents in 1925 and was the first school for girls in the Konkan area. They also founded an arts and science college and a boy’s high school in what had previously been a very backward area. Educated at Potwardham High School from 1940 to 1947, he then spent two years at R. P. Gogate College in Ratnagiri. He studied medicine at the University of Bombay, winning the P. T. Patel scholarship in 1949 and the V. R. Khananolkar prize in 1950. After graduating MB, BS in 1954, he spent six months as a house surgeon and one year as a surgical registrar at the King Edward Memorial Hospital, Bombay. He then worked as an orthopaedic house surgeon and was mentored by R. J. Katrak and Anappa Vithal Boliga. He passed the fellowship of the college in 1958 and the following year was appointed honorary surgeon at the Sassoon General Hospital and assistant professor of surgery at the B. J. Medical College in Pune. In 1962 he was made professor of surgery and put in charge of the surgical unit. He also developed a private practice in digestive and laparascopic surgery. He retired in 1990 and became an emeritus professor. An active member of numerous professional bodies, he was president of the Indian Society of Gastroenterology in 1988 and of the Association of Surgeons of India in 1989. Notably he organised a joint meeting of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and the Association of Surgeons of India in New Delhi in 1991 with Sir Terence English and Tony Ratcliff and was president of the 11th World Congress of the International College of Digestive Surgery, also in New Delhi, in 1990. A keen badminton and tennis player, he later enjoyed golf. He married Mohini in 1960 and they had three children, of whom the eldest son Mukund also became professor of surgery at the B. J. Medical College. His daughter Madhuri Lokapur qualified in medicine and became a specialist in pain management and palliative care and his son Girish was a computer engineer in Palo Alto, California, USA. His wife predeceased him and he died on 2 March 2010, aged 79.