George Dommisse was one of South Africa's leading orthopaedic surgeons. He was born in Dewetsdorp, Orange Free State, on 1 November 1914, and was educated at the Boys' High School, Worcester. He went on to study medicine at Cape Town, where he was house surgeon and house physician. He came to London in 1939 to work at the Bolingbroke Hospital, as house surgeon and casualty officer during the Blitz. He then went on to be a demonstrator of anatomy in Edinburgh, before going to the Shetland Isles as RSO in the Gilbert Bain Hospital in Lerwick, where he met and married Eileen Thompson in 1941. After a further period as RSO at Carluke Emergency Hospital, he returned to South Africa as medical officer in the South African Medical Corps, at first at the Cullinan and Zonderwater Hospitals. He later went to Italy, first with the 107 SA Military Hospital and then the 64 British Military Hospital. He was mentioned in despatches. He returned to Pretoria with the No 1 SA Military Hospital, where he worked for five years. He went into private practice, but returned to full-time academic work in 1970. He was eventually made an associate professor at the University of Pretoria. His main interests were in the surgery of the spine, scoliosis and the blood supply of the spinal cord. In 1963 he helped found the South African College of Physicians, Surgeons, Gynaecologists and Obstetricians. He was President of the South African Orthopaedic Association from 1967 to 1969 and was Chairman of the National Council for the Care of Cripples in South Africa from 1975 to 1987. He travelled extensively, and was an Arris and Gale lecturer of our College in 1979. He died on 30 November 2001, leaving his wife, Eileen, three daughters, Dorothy Mary, Maureen Helen and Freya Noelle, and a son, Iain George Dommisse, FRCS, an orthopaedic surgeon in British Columbia.