Lynne Wilford Baker was head of the department of surgery at the University of Natal Medical School, South Africa. He was born on 28 June 1928 in Potchefstroom, Transvaal, the first child of Lynne Wilford Borrius Baker, a bank clerk, and Fredericka Wilhelmina Baker née Tom, the daughter of a ‘landrost’ or magistrate. Baker attended Bezuidenhout Valley Junior School, Troyeville Boys’ School and Jeppe Boys’ High School and then went on to Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg to study medicine, where he held a Barclays Bank scholarship. He qualified in 1951. He returned to Potchefstroom, where he worked as a general practitioner, but subsequently decided to train in surgery. He went to the UK and trained under Hugh Dudley and George Mavor at Aberdeen University, where he developed an interest in venous disease and arterial surgery. He gained his fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1958 and of England in 1961. He went on to McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where he completed a MSc degree in surgery. In 1967 he returned to South Africa, where he was appointed head of department and professor of surgery at the University of Natal, based at the King Edward VIII Hospital. Here he worked hard to develop a first-rate department of surgery and persuaded the authorities to create independent departments, notably paediatric surgery, urology and ENT. He fostered many connections overseas and took regular sabbaticals. In 1994 he delivered the Semmelweiss lecture on ‘Lessons from lavage and colonic trauma’ at the Surgical Infection Society of Europe Congress in Vienna. He held senior leadership roles in the College of Medicine of South Africa and in other organisations including the Surgical Research Society and the Trauma Society, as well as the Association of Surgeons of South Africa. Outside medicine he enjoyed rugby and golf; at university he swam. In 1956 he married Barbara Young. They had two children, Diane and Andrew, and three grandchildren. Lynne Baker died on 10 February 2017. He was 88.