Rankin Kilgour Hay was a neurosurgeon at the University of Manitoba’s faculty of medicine, Winnipeg, Canada. He was born on 13 October 1917 in Chopwell, near Durham, Tyne and Wear, the son of Gladys Hay née Christopher and Robert Kilgour Hay, a power station engineer. He studied medicine at Durham University and qualified in 1940. He was a resident medical officer at Leazes Hospital, Newcastle, and a house surgeon at the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle. He then served with the Royal Army Medical Corps in Normandy, Arnhem and Ghana. After the end of the Second World War, he was an officer in command of a hospital in Calais for soldiers repatriating to England. In 1947, following his demobilisation, he began training in general surgery and neurosurgery at Newcastle. He gained his fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1952. In 1953 he travelled to Montreal, Canada on a Wilder Penfield fellowship. After 1956 he worked at the Montreal Neurological Institute, Montreal General Hospital and Queen Mary Veteran’s Hospital. Two years later he joined the Winnipeg Clinic and, after becoming a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, was appointed to the neurological staff of the University of Manitoba’s faculty of medicine and its teaching hospitals. He was acting head of the neurosurgery section from 1981 until his retirement in 1984. He was a consultant to the Workers Compensation Board until 1989 and then devoted his time to local neurosurgical history. His book *Neurosurgery and neurological science in Manitoba, 1884-1984* (Winnipeg, Loewen Publications) was published in 2003. He was an avid golfer, as his father had been. He played for the University of Durham and with friends and family into his retirement. Hay died on 1 May 2013 in Winnipeg at the age of 95. He was survived Winifred (née Oliver), his wife of 70 years, their children Diana, Angela and Andrew, three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.