John Seddon Hopkins was a consultant orthopaedic and trauma surgeon in Nottinghamshire, at King’s Mill, Newark General and Harlow Wood Orthopaedic hospitals. He was born in Hamilton, New Zealand, on 4 March 1930. His father, Allan Hopkins, was a general surgeon, general practitioner and hospital medical superintendent of Westland Hospital in Hokitika on the South Island, who was a classmate and close friend of the pioneering plastic surgeon Archibald McIndoe. His mother was Adeline Mary Hopkins née Oates, a housewife and part-time dance teacher. Following his father’s death from diphtheria the year after Hopkins was born, his mother returned with him to her hometown of Huddersfield in Yorkshire. He attended Huddersfield College (a grammar school) and later Epsom College on an entrance scholarship. He excelled academically at school and at sports; whilst at Epsom College he became the Surrey County junior boxing champion. He won a scholarship to study medicine at St Bartholomew’s Hospital medical school, where he won prizes for physiology and anatomy and qualified in 1953. After house posts at Barts, he carried out his National Service from August 1954 to December 1956 as a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps. He spent a brief period at the British Military Hospital at Trieste, Italy and was then a medical officer in the 1st Battalion Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders in Germany, Scotland and Korea. He was also recalled for the Suez Emergency. In 1957 he was a house surgeon in general surgery at the North Middlesex Hospital in London. He was then a house surgeon and locum registrar at Birmingham Accident Hospital from January to July 1958. He subsequently returned to London, as a registrar in chest surgery at the London Chest Hospital from 1958 to 1959, and a surgical registrar at the Royal Masonic Hospital from 1959 to 1960. In 1961, he was a registrar in general and ENT surgery at Mount Vernon Hospital, then a registrar in general surgeon at Lewisham General Hospital, from 1961 to 1962. He was subsequently a registrar in orthopaedic surgery at St Bartholomew’s Hospital for a year and then at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital in Oswestry. From 1966 to 1967 he was a senior registrar in orthopaedic surgery for the Leeds region, at Bradford Royal Infirmary and Leeds General Infirmary. In 1965 he was a temporary consultant at the General Hospital in Birmingham for five months. In 1967 he was appointed as a consultant orthopaedic and trauma surgeon to the Central Nottinghamshire Health District, including Mansfield General Hospital and Harlow Wood Orthopaedic Hospital. He was also a clinical tutor at Nottingham University and a tutor for the Royal College of Surgeons of England. At Harlow Wood he developed a special interest in bone tumour surgery and treatment. He was chairman of the medical staff committee (central Nottinghamshire) and a member of the district management committee. He was president of the Mansfield Medical Society and of the Nottinghamshire Medico Legal Society. After his retirement in 1993 he moved to Buckinghamshire to be nearer his children and grandchildren. Outside medicine he loved to garden, visit places of historical interest and travel. Hopkins died on 22 November 2019 at the age of 89. He was survived by his wife Carmel (née McEvoy), a nurse and midwife he had married in 1960, and their five children, twins Caroline and Louise, Michael, and twins Christopher Neil and Rosalind Diana.