Educated at Lahore and the London Hospital Said Ahmad spent much of his professional life in the Indian Medical Service. In 1936 with the rank of captain he served in Waziristan at the combined Indian Military Hospital at Razmak. In 1943 he was civil surgeon at Agra and later he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. While taking his Fellowship he worked as a house surgeon at the Royal Hospital, Wolverhampton, and in later years he worked at the Jinnah Central Hospital and the Dow Medical College, Karachi and continued to practise until shortly before his death in 1995 at the age of 90. He was survived by his son Faruq Ahmad who was living in San Francisco at the time of his father's death. **See below for an additional expanded obituary uploaded 21 January 2022:** Said Ahmad had a long and successful career that spanned over 60 years of active practice as a surgeon in Pakistan, with a focus on plastic and reconstructive surgery. He authored numerous papers, developed novel procedures and was instrumental in public medical institution-building in Pakistan after its independence in 1947. He was born into a family with a tradition of healing and knowledge; the family estate in Wazirabad in the Punjab was named ‘Haveli Hakiman’ or house of hakims (traditional healers). His father, Khan Bahadur Nazir Ahmad, chose to settle in Kashmir to avoid colonial rule, and was progressing rapidly as a judge when Said was born in 1905. He retired as chief judge and home minister in Kashmir in 1929. Said Ahmad attended SR High School in Jammu and then studied medicine at King Edward College in Lahore, qualifying in 1928. He then went to the UK for his advanced qualifications, obtaining his FRCS in 1931 in just 18 months. He was reportedly the first Muslim from the Indian subcontinent to gain the FRCS. While studying for his fellowship he worked as a house surgeon at the Royal Hospital, Wolverhampton. After returning home, he practised briefly in Lahore with his sister, Kaniz Fatimah, and then joined the Indian Medical Service in the British Indian Army, and was stationed at various times in Iraq, Turkey and elsewhere in the region. In 1936, with the rank of captain, he served in Waziristan at the combined Indian Military Hospital at Razmak. In 1943 he was a civil surgeon at Agra and later rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. Following partition, he moved with his young family to Karachi, then the capital and commercial centre of the new nation of Pakistan, where there was little medical infrastructure in place. He served from 1949 to 1953 as superintendent at Jinnah Central Hospital, the major public hospital in Karachi. He also established the surgery department at Dow Medical College, which was attached to Civil Hospital, Karachi’s other major hospital. During this period he took the lead in specifying basic requirements for hospitals, including the local manufacturing of surgical instruments, hygiene standards for food procurement and safety, and essential sterilisation techniques. During his career he invented numerous new techniques and wrote extensively. His papers were published in international journals, and a collection was published in book form as *Practical surgery*, which contains information on new procedures, instructions on how to sterilise and prevent infection, medical ethics and even operating theatre design. He also volunteered his time at the Navy Hospital at Shifa. He was a ‘surgeons’ surgeon’ and relished hard cases. In one instance, he was called by a panicked colleague to save a patient whose bile duct had been ruptured through surgical error and rushed out in the middle of the night in his dressing gown and pyjamas to handle the situation. At the mandatory retirement at the age of 60 he was ‘going strong’ professionally and had five children between the ages of 11 and 18 to feed, so he took the risky step of mortgaging his house and built a hospital so he could continue to practice. With his wife Azra as chief administrator, Said Clinic became a preeminent private hospital in Karachi, located in the central commercial corridor of McLeod Road and reached 100-bed capacity with surgery, radiology, psychology and other specialties, and a medical store and cafeteria on site. When he hung up his scalpel, he had been a practising surgeon for over 60 years. He was the recipient of several awards during wartime with the British Indian Army, and in Pakistan during peacetime for his service to the country. Outside medicine, he enjoyed sculpting in clay. He had spent his early years in lush Srinagar and enjoyed gardens, flowers and trees, which he replicated through irrigation at the family home in Karachi, with a rose garden, grape vines, lawns, trees and greenery that covered an acre. He loved the ocean, and a typical family Sunday getaway was to one of two beach huts. Said Ahmad married and later divorced Phyllis Cohen, and they had a daughter, Naomi. He then married Azra Nazim, the daughter of Mohammad Nazim, an historian, in 1946, and they had five children, Nighat, Nishat, Faruq, Farhat and Yousuf, three of whom took up medicine. He was also a mentor to and inspiration for his grandson Tariq Ahmad, who became the medical director of heart transplantation at Yale University’s school of medicine. Said Ahmad died on 28 April 1995 at the age of 90, surrounded by family and appreciated by the community he served. Faruq Ahmad