Leslie H Blumgart (‘Les’) was one of the world leaders in hepato-pancreato-biliary (HPB) surgery. Known affectionately as ‘the professor’ by his many trainees, he was a dominant figure in the evolution of HPB surgery around the world for almost 50 years and built one of the great HPB clinical and academic programs at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York. He trained a generation of surgical oncologists and HPB surgeons who carry forward his legacy. He was born in Benoni, South Africa, on 7 December 1931, the son of Harold Hermann Blumgart, a mine surveyor, and Hilda Blumgart née Mitchell, a housewife. He attended Jeppe High School in Johannesburg and went on to study dentistry at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, qualifying in 1954. He then moved to the UK to study medicine at the University of Sheffield, from where he graduated in 1962. Having qualified in medicine he remained in Sheffield for his junior posts; he was a house surgeon to Andrew Watt Kay and a house physician to Charles Stuart-Harris. He then undertook a research fellowship on the management of liver trauma in the department of pathology, University of Nottingham, stimulating his career in hepatobiliary surgery. He gained his fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1966 and his MD in 1969. He went on to become an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, the American College of Surgeons, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. In 1970 he was appointed as a senior lecturer and deputy director in the department of surgery at the Welsh National School of Medicine, Cardiff and an honorary consultant surgeon at the University Hospital of Wales. From 1972 to 1979 he was the St Mungo professor of surgery at the University of Glasgow and an honorary consultant surgeon at Glasgow Royal Infirmary. He then moved to London, as professor of surgery and director of the department of surgery at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, University of London, and an honorary consultant at Hammersmith Hospital. In 1986 he was appointed as a professor of visceral and transplantation surgery at the University of Bern, Switzerland, and a consultant surgeon at Inselspital Bern. In 1991 he was recruited to New York, to the MSKCC as chief of the hepatobiliary (subsequently hepato-pancreaticobiliary) service in the department of surgery and holder of the Enid Haupt chair and professor of surgery at Cornell University Medical Center. Other positions held while at MSKCC included attending surgeon at the Memorial Hospital for Cancer and Allied Diseases and director of the hepatobiliary disease management program. Les Blumgart was one of the most influential figures in the evolution of modern approaches to liver, pancreas and bile duct surgery. His life’s work took the field from performing surgical resections and reconstructions with frequent complications, massive blood loss and high mortality to a far safer and more effective era. He also led efforts to advance the multidisciplinary care of cancer patients, improving long-term outcomes through the integration of chemotherapy and radiation therapy with surgery. He authored over 500 papers in peer-reviewed journals, edited 15 books and wrote over 150 book chapters. He served on the editorial boards of 14 major journals in surgery, gastroenterology and oncology. Most significantly, he created the definitive text on surgery of the liver, biliary tract and pancreas, a work that is now in its seventh edition and continues to bear his name (*Blumgart’s surgery of the liver, biliary tract and pancreas* Elsevier, 2022). Over the years, he lectured nationally and internationally, delivering over 200 eponymous lectures and orations around the world. He was an honorary member or fellow of dozens of surgical associations, including the American Surgical Association, the Society for Surgery of the Alimentary Tract, the Danish Surgical Society, the Hong Kong Surgical Society, the Hellenic Surgical Society and the Yugoslav Society of Surgery, and received the lifetime achievement award from the European Society of Surgical Oncology in 2014. Locally, he won the teacher of the year award in the department of surgery at MSKCC on multiple occasions (in 1999, 2005 and 2011) and received the MSKCC distinguished alumnus award in 2012. Blumgart was a founding member of the International Biliary Association, a precursor to the International Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary Association (IHPBA), serving the organisation as an officer for many years, including as president in 1986. In more recent years, he was honoured by the IHPBA in 2008 as a ‘living legend’. Other honours and distinctions included the Moynihan travelling fellowship of the Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland in 1972 and the Order of the Prasidda, Prabala-Gorkha-Dakshin Bahu (Nepal), awarded in 1984. Despite his exceptional and perhaps unequalled contributions to HPB surgery, his greatest accomplishment (and the one he would most appreciate being recognised for) was in educating and training HPB surgeons from around the world. Many current leaders in HPB surgery and surgical oncology, as well as chairs of departments of surgery around the world, credit him with providing the training and inspiration that have guided their careers. While carrying out a vigorous practice at MSKCC for over two decades, he also generated a video library of complex HPB procedures, which he used in facilitating the training of HPB surgical fellows for many years. After he stopped performing clinical surgery himself, he continued to lecture regularly to the surgical fellows at MSKCC, facilitated by his films. Only in his last several years did health issues and the covid pandemic limit his teaching activities. Less well known was his great artistic talent, which he pursued well after he retired from clinical practice. He was a particularly gifted sculptor and watercolour painter, producing many magnificent pieces that graced his home. He married Pearl Navias in 1955, who passed away in 1967, before subsequently marrying Sarah Raybould Bowen in 1968. He died on 27 September 2022 at the age of 90. Sarah survived him, along with their four children, Michael, Karen, Oliver and Kate, and their grandchildren.