Fred Ehrlich was a professor of rehabilitation, aged and extended care at the University of New South Wales: his career in medicine and academia spanned orthopaedic surgery, psychiatry, geriatrics and rehabilitation. He was born on 23 March 1923 in Czernowitz, Bukovina (now divided between Romania and Ukraine). His father, Alexander Ehrlich, was a businessman; his mother, Klara Ehrlich née Schneider, was the daughter of a court official. He was a distant relative of the Nobel prize-winning physician and scientist Paul Ehrlich. Ehrlich attended primary and Yiddish schools in Czernowitz. A Holocaust survivor, in 1947 he immigrated with his parents to Sydney, Australia, not speaking a word of English. He attended North Sydney Technical High School, where he was *dux*. He went on to study medicine at Sydney University, where he was an exhibitioner, and qualified in 1955. While at Sydney University he was a flight lieutenant in the university air squadron. He spent eight years as a resident and registrar at the Royal Newcastle Hospital, New South Wales, and then a year there as a surgical registrar. For nine years he was a full-time staff surgeon at the Psychiatric Centre, North Ryde, New South Wales. He was also a lecturer in clinical surgery at the University of Sydney. In 1958 he gained his fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and, a year later, of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. He was subsequently appointed as a professor at the University of New South Wales. Interested in sociology and social medicine, he held a holistic view that medicine should be about helping people and not just treating disease. He advocated a ‘total care’ approach to medicine and encouraged social intervention. He served as president of the Gerontological Society of New South Wales. He finished his medical career as a specialist in the medico-legal field. He was an active member of the Jewish community. He was a founding parent of Masada College, a Jewish co-educational school in Sydney, and served as president from 1967 to 1970. He was on the boards of the North Shore Synagogue, the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies, JCA and Mandelbaum House, a college affiliated to the University of Sydney. In 1959 he married Shirley Rose Eastbourne. They had six children – Paul, Rachel, Simon, Adam, Miriam and Avrum – 19 grandchildren and one great grandchild. Fred Ehrlich died on 2 November 2017. He was 85.