Martin Richard Phelan was an osteopathic physician in the department of rheumatology at University College Hospital, Middlesex Hospital and the Royal Homeopathic Hospital, London. He was born in October 1938 in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, the son of John Phelan and Mary Phelan née Kennedy. He studied dentistry in London and qualified in 1963. He went on to gain a diploma in orthodontics in 1969 and became a fellow of the Faculty of Dental Surgery of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1970. He decided to go to medical school and qualified in medicine with the licentiate in medicine and surgery of the Society of Apothecaries in 1977 and the MB BChir of the University of Cambridge in 1980. He was a house surgeon on the professorial unit, University of Cambridge. He went on to qualify as an osteopath at the London College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1987 and later became a tutor there. Phelan died on 28 May 2015 in London. He was 77