Francis Allan was born on March 21 1900, received his medical education at St Thomas's Hospital and qualified in 1925. After holding a resident post at his teaching hospital he became an assistant at the Royal Cripples' Hospital, Birmingham, and thereafter spent his professional life in the Midlands. He was in turn attached to the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital, Birmingham, the Children's Hospital and the Warwickshire Orthopaedic Hospital. Finally he worked at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital and was one of a team of orthopaedic surgeons centred around Hereford. Throughout the second world war he had the opportunity to extend his clinical practice and had an unrivalled series of femoral and tibial lengthenings which was the basis of a paper he gave in 1961. Allan was also an authority on the management of scoliosis and he produced an internal splint for this condition. His interest in orthopaedic surgery was maintained after his retirement and he continued in active practice until the day he died, February 15, 1975. He is survived by his wife, three daughters and a son.