Abdelrazik El-Zawawi, the seventh of twelve children of Badawy El-Zawawi, a teacher, and of Suad Suedan, was born on 11 September 1931, at Alexandria, Egypt. The family was of Libyan origin but the paternal grandfather had settled and married in Egypt. After education at Egyptian national schools Abdelrazik entered the faculty of medicine at Alexandria University where he graduated in 1956. Following resident appointments in Alexandria he became a surgical specialist at Benghazi Civil Hospital in 1960, head of surgery at the Social Security Hospital in 1972, lecturer in surgery and vice-dean of Benghazi University in the same year, and then assistant professor of surgery. This was followed by appointment as associate professor and first dean of the faculty of medicine at El Fatteh University, Tripoli, from 1974 to 1978. In 1978 he became associate professor and head of the department of surgery at Garyounis Medical Faculty, Benghazi, and chairman of the Arab University Medical Faculty in 1985. In each of these appointments he played a pioneering role in the organisation of medical training and teaching, and administration. He had clearly spent some time in the UK when he took his FRCS, but no details of his hospital appointments are available. Outside his professional work he was much interested in gardening, and in his early years he had been keen on football and swimming. He was married to Dr Loyla El Gayar, a paediatrician, in 1958, by whom he had a daughter, who is a physician, and a son. Some three years before he died he was found to have a malignant lymphoma and, later, also an adenocarcinoma of the lung. At the time of his death on 23 February 1987 he was survived by his wife and two children.