Robin Denham was an orthopaedic surgeon in Portsmouth. He was born on 18 April 1922, and studied medicine at St Thomas’s medical school in London, qualifying in 1945. He was a senior registrar at Rowley Bristow Hospital in Pyrford and at St Peter’s Hospital, Chertsey. He was subsequently appointed to Portsmouth. In 1956 he designed the threaded traction pin, which prevented loosening while patients spent up to three months on traction for leg fractures, in the days before internal fixation. He also promoted surgery and internal fixation for ankle fractures when plaster was the norm and post-traumatic arthritis was common. During the 1970s he developed a simple sturdy external fixation device for tibial fractures, nicknamed ‘the Portsmouth bar’. Cheap and reusable, the bar was particularly useful in less developed countries. He studied the biomechanics of the knee with a colleague, R Bishop, wrote several papers on the subject and invented a knee replacement, first implanted in Portsmouth. An excellent teacher, Denham lectured in many countries. He was a fellow of the British Orthopaedic Association and a former President of the British Association of Surgery of the Knee. He was a keen clay pigeon shot and one of the founder members of the British Orthopaedic Ski Club. He died on 26 July 2004.