Mercer Rang was an eminent paediatric orthopaedic surgeon. He was born in London in 1933 and studied medicine at University College London. He was a house officer in London and then a resident at Rochester. He went on to complete two years National Service, as a command surgical specialist in Northern Ireland. He then undertook postgraduate orthopaedic training, and was inspired by Lipmann Kessel to pursue an academic career. He enrolled in the programme of the Royal Northern Orthopaedic Hospital. In 1965 he was seconded to Jamaica, where he served for two years as a senior lecturer in orthopaedic surgery at the University of West Indies under Sir John Golding. In 1967 he went to the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto as a basic research fellow and, with R B Salter, undertook research on the pathogenesis of deformity of the femoral head in an animal model of Legg-Perthes’ disease. He was appointed to the staff of the division of orthopaedic surgery at the end of the year, where he continued undertaking research until his retirement from the hospital in 1999. He then practised and taught orthopaedics in Saudi Arabia for one year, until he became ill and returned to Canada. Mercer had many clinical interests in paediatric orthopaedic surgery, but his most important contributions were in the fields of children’s fractures and neuromuscular disorders, especially in cerebral palsy, as well as the history of orthopaedics. He wrote 12 book chapters, and published 61 articles and six books, including *The growth plate and its disorders* (1969, Edinburgh/London, E & S Livingstone), *Children’s fractures* (c1983, Philadelphia, Lippincott) and *The story of orthopaedics* (2000, Philadelphia/London, W B Saunders). He received many honours and awards, including an honorary fellowship of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons in 1990, honorary fellowship of the British Orthopaedic Association in 1996 and the Alan Graham Apley gold medal of that Association in 1999. He was married to Helen and they had three daughters (Caroline, Sarah and Louise) and six grandchildren. He died on 6 October 2003 after a long illness.