Sydney Mahaindra Nauth Jaikaran was a specialist in physical medicine and rehabilitation in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. He was born in British Guiana on 5 January 1934, the youngest of nine children. In 1952 he won a Guyana scholarship to study medicine at St Catharine's College, Cambridge. Four of his siblings had studied medicine in England. After qualifying in 1959, he practised general surgery in England, Nigeria and Jamaica, and orthopaedic surgery in Canada, in Toronto and Peterborough. In his early forties, an illness left him nearly blind and he was forced to abandon his surgical career. He returned to medical school to retrain as a specialist in physical medicine and rehabilitation. He opened a practice in Peterborough and provided specialist care for the community for 14 years. Outside medicine he enjoyed windsurfing. Jaikaran died on 27 April 2004. He was 70.