John Michael O’Brien was born in Birmingham, the son of Denis O’Brien, a general practitioner and a graduate of the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland (RCSI). His mother, whose maiden name was Sheldon, was a graduate of Liverpool University, had a diploma in obstetrics and was also a student of anaesthetics. Various uncles were also fellows of the RCSI as was his grandfather. John was educated at the Douai School in Berkshire and then studied medicine at Trinity College, Dublin, graduating MB, BCh, BAO in 1958. During his student years he attended a lecture by the Nobel prize winning physicist Ernest T. S. Walton and regarded this as a *profound experience*. After initially working as a registrar at Liverpool Royal Infirmary he began to specialise in urological surgery, and became a senior registrar at the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh. He then spent some time in Canada, as a clinical research fellow at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. In 1969 he passed the fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and the following year he passed the college fellowship. Appointed a consultant urological surgeon at the East Birmingham General and the Solihull Hospitals, he also held the position of senior clinical lecturer in surgery at the University of Birmingham. He was a member of the panel of examiners of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, a member of the British Medical Association and also of the British Association of Urological Surgeons. When young he had played cricket and continued to support the game, being a follower of the Phoenix team in Birmingham. A huntsman, he collected sporting guns made by Boss, Purdey or Holland and he was a life member of the Royal Dublin Agricultural Society. After his marriage to Patricia Mary, they had three children: Catherine Mary who was a junior doctor at St Thomas’s and then the Bristol Royal Infirmary, Claire Grania who worked for Wragg and Co, a law firm in Birmingham and John Desmond who was in his third year at Nottingham University (in 1996 when these family details were given). His date of death is unknown.