Hardev Singh Coonar was a consultant oral surgeon at the Eastman and Hammersmith hospitals, London. He was born on 9 December 1933 in Chakrata, India, into a Sikh family, the son of Shamsher Singh, a major in the Indian Army Medical Corps, and Sardarni Partap Kaur. He attended several different schools during the Second World War and matriculated in 1949 from Victoria Dalip High School, Solan, Baghat State. He then went to Ripudaman College Nabha, affiliated to Panjab University in the Punjab, where he passed the faculty of science examination in 1952, a basic requirement for applying to dental or medical schools. He went on to study dentistry at the Government Dental College in Amritsar, gaining his BDS in 1956; his education was supported by his elder brother Pritam Singh. Coonar came second in the final examinations; Sarla Sachdeva, who in 1964 became his wife, was first. He held several training posts, including as a house surgeon and senior house surgeon at the Dental Hospital, Amritsar, and was subsequently appointed as an assistant professor in the dental wing of Madras Medical College. In 1959 he took part one of the fellowship examination of the Faculty of Dental Surgery of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in Colombo. For the next three years he held a short service commission in the Indian Army Dental Corps, where he gained a distinction in the junior officers’ course and was awarded a gold medal as the best cadet. From April to December 1962, he took a postgraduate course at the Eastman Dental Hospital in London, and in 1963 passed the final Faculty of Dental Surgery examination. In 1963 Hardev was appointed as a senior lecturer at the Postgraduate Medical Institute in Chandigarh, to set up a dental department. He was later an assistant professor and the first head of that department until 1974, with a short interruption for higher training in Europe. In 1967 he passed the General Dental Council’s statutory exam, which enabled him to practise dentistry in the UK. From February to August 1967, he was a postgraduate fellow in oral surgery in Aarhus, Denmark. In the UK, he carried out some NHS general practice work from 1968 to 1973 and then held posts at Guy’s Hospital, as a registrar (from 1974 to 1976) and a senior registrar (from 1976 to 1977) in oral surgery. From January to June 1970, he was a senior resident in oral surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He returned to the UK, where he was a locum senior registrar at Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead and a senior registrar at the Eastman. In 1982 he was appointed as a consultant oral surgeon at the Eastman Dental Hospital and as an honorary senior lecturer at the Eastman Dental Institute, and as a consultant at Hammersmith and Charing Cross hospitals. He retired in 1999 and then became a locum consultant at the Royal Free Hospital (until 2001). He was also a visiting professor at the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh. From March 2007 until February 2010, he was an associate clinical teacher at Warwick Medical School. His particular interest was in dental implantation. In 1984 he attended a basic diploma course in implantology at the Brånemark Centre in Göteborg, Sweden, and in 1986 the advanced diploma course. He taught surgical aspects of implants to MSc oral surgery students at the Eastman from 1985 to 1999. He was involved in philanthropy and cofounded a dental pain relief clinic in Hansali, a village in rural Punjab. Coonar died on 6 May 2019 at the age of 85. Predeceased by his wife Sarla, an orthodontist, he was survived by their son Aman Singh, a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon and a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and their daughter, Amit Kaur, an orthodontist and a fellow of the Faculty of Dental Surgery of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.