Sailendra Bhattacharyya was born in Calcutta on 26 November 1924, the fourth child and eldest son of Shri Jagatnarayan Bhattacharyya and his wife Debi née Bagalasundari. His father was a businessman and the nephew of a famous homeopathic doctor, Shri Mahesh Chandra Bhattacharyya. After attending the Scottish Church Collegiate School in Calcutta, he matriculated in 1942 and studied at the Scottish Church College, passing the ISc. in 1944. He trained in medicine at the R. G. Kar Medical College (RGKMC) and hospital and graduated MB, BS from Calcutta University in 1949. During house jobs in Calcutta he began to specialise in orthopaedics and worked with the founder of the orthopaedic department at the RGKMC, Professor K. C. Sarbadhikary. In 1953 he won a scholarship to the USA and spent a year as resident in orthopaedic surgery at the Bone and Joint Hospital in Oklahoma City before proceeding to the UK where he spent time being mentored by the orthopaedic surgeon Alexander Law in Southampton and passed the fellowship of the college in 1956. On returning to Calcutta later that year he worked at the Sambhunath Pandit Hospital for two years before returning to the RGKMC as a lecturer in orthopaedics. He stayed at the college for 18 years before resigning as an associate professor in 1976 because, he said, the hospital was not keeping up with the times. Appointed orthopaedic consultant at the newly constructed Calcutta Medical and Research Institute, he was able to enjoy the state of the art facilities in a modern hospital. There he carried out many pioneering orthopaedic procedures such as knee replacements and spinal fixations and decompressions. He carried out the first total hip replacement in eastern India and was particularly well known for his treatment of elbow arthrolysis in posttraumatic elbow stiffness. As well as running a busy private practice at Harrington Street, Calcutta, he also managed to found a new hospital and orthopaedic teaching institute at Narayanpur christened the Bhattacharyya Orthopaedics and Related Research Centre (BORRC) in 1994. He was determined that all should have access to the treatment they needed regardless of their ability to pay. The BORRC was a great success and it is claimed that he continued to give consultations to over 60 patients a day into his 90’s and was supervising operations up to the age of 85. Throughout his life he continued to promote orthopaedic education in his country and founded the Gurukul Ashram at BORRC to provide postgraduate education and training for junior orthopaedic surgeons. He attended numerous academic conferences both nationally and internationally and published widely. A meticulous record keeper, he had most of his handwritten records digitised in 1992. Among the many professional bodies he was a member of, he was president of the West Bengal Orthopaedic Association from 1988 to1989 and vice-president of the Indian Orthopaedic Association. Outside medicine he was a keen gardener and a voracious reader. A convivial man, he was famous for providing numerous savoury snacks for his visitors which he expected them to finish. In 1951 he married Ms Geeta and they had two sons and a daughter. In his later years he lived with his son Inderjeet, his wife Kalyani and their two children. He enjoyed visiting his daughter and son-in-law in the USA and would return from these trips with various new electronic devices which he was always eager to use. After a short illness, he died on 18 July 2018 aged 93.