Dick Greenwood was born on 3 May 1928, the son of John Herbert Kay Greenwood, and Hilda née Wild. He was educated at Manchester Grammar School and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he rowed for his college, and did his clinical training at St Thomas's. After junior appointments in London, Exeter and Gloucester, he was an anatomy demonstrator in Cambridge, and then returned to St Thomas's as deputy director of the surgical unit and surgical tutor. He spent a year as a Wellcome fellow at the Mayo Clinic, before being appointed consultant in general and peripheral vascular surgery at Leicester General Hospital. There he continued to take St Thomas's students for teaching attachments long before Leicester became a teaching hospital. He contributed many articles on a wide range of surgical topics. He was ombudsman of the joint consultants committee, sub-chairman of the central medical manpower committee, and was a medical examiner for the health committee of the GMC and UKCC (nursing). He gave his recreations as mountaineering, rowing, bridge, croquet and politics. He married Sandrina (Sandy) Margurite Campbell in 1961, by whom he had one son, Alastair, and one daughter, Laura. He died on October 17 1999.