David Bouchier-Hayes was a professor of surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI). He was born on 30 December 1940 in Dublin, one of 12 children of Thomas Bouchier-Hayes and Mona Bouchier-Hayes née Graham. His father was born in Limerick in 1907 and became a prominent and much-loved surgeon in Dublin with a huge practice. His day care surgery clinic was so busy that one junior doctor stated that when ‘Next patient for Mr Bouchier-Hayes’ was called, everyone stood up as if for the National Anthem. He died suddenly in 1960 at the age of 52, shortly after David started university. David’s mother was born in 1909 in Shinrone, County Offaly, then known as King’s County, and qualified as a nurse. It must have been an extraordinarily difficult time for her to bear the responsibility for the children after her husband’s death. She was, however, a resourceful lady. She had a calm, gentle manner and in adversity displayed a determination which was to become characteristic of many in her family. David’s eldest sibling, Tommy, joined the British Army and became a hugely successful professor of general practice at the Royal Army Medical College at Millbank. David attended St Conleth’s College, Dublin, where he was school captain, and went on to study medicine at University College Dublin. He graduated in 1965, having achieved several distinctions as a student. He was an intern and a senior house officer at his teaching hospital, St Vincent’s. He then spent three years at the Western Infirmary, Glasgow, before returning to St Vincent’s for his higher training as a senior registrar. In 1977, he was a Fogarty fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital, after which he was appointed as a consultant surgeon at St Laurence’s Hospital (the Richmond) in Dublin, where his father had also worked as a consultant. David was deeply proud that he had followed his father, not only in his profession, but in the same hospital, to which they were both so staunchly affiliated. In 1981, he was appointed as professor of surgery at the RCSI, a position he held until his retirement in 2005. He also served as dean of the medical school from 1988 to 1993. When the Richmond and Jervis Street hospitals merged, they were replaced by the new Beaumont Hospital. When it opened in 1987 it became the principal teaching institution of the medical school of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. Vascular surgery in Ireland had been initiated by his predecessor in RCSI, Bill MacGowan, and by Paddy FitzGerald in University College Dublin. David spearheaded the advancement of this specialty and established an enormous practice in emergency and elective work. To have developed a strong and busy clinical department was a major factor in his attracting ambitious and enthusiastic surgical trainees to his unit. His personal qualities of dedication to surgery, his restless drive to make things better, his appreciation of the history of surgery, his ability to listen, to consider new approaches and never to disparage novel views, rendered his department an exciting and attractive place for surgeons-in-training. From the earliest stages of his career he was concerned with delivering the highest standard of clinical care. He treated his patients to the best of his ability, thereby providing an exemplary model for medical students. He impressed a generation of students not only by this example but by the quality of his teaching, which sometimes, to a bewildered and puzzled audience, deviated from the biological and the clinical to consideration of epistemology or the philosophy of science. He had an unusual admixture of confidence, self-belief and humility, which made him a courageous yet careful surgeon, a considerate and kind clinician, an understanding teacher and an innovative professor. The RCSI with its global reach, under the guidance of Bill MacGowan and Kevin O’Malley, provided powerful and influential support to him in his efforts to develop the research side of surgery. He established a research laboratory in Beaumont, which was to become a powerhouse of scientific competence and excellence, always sustained and driven by his formidable curiosity and scepticism. His fierce loyalty to the RCSI and to his hospital was as secure and strong as a surgical knot. This bond in turn engendered immense loyalty among those rotating through his department during training. He was fortunate to have outstanding young surgical scientists as Paul Redmond (later professor of surgery at the University College Cork), Cathal Kelly (later CEO of RCSI) and others join him in promoting and delivering high quality surgical research. Presentations by members of his department dominated meetings of the Surgical Research Society for a time and their scientific contributions were features at prestigious meetings of the Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland and the surgical research forum of the American College of Surgeons. The coveted Patey prize of the Surgical Research Society and the Moynihan medal of Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland were rewards for the commitment, scholarship and scientific rigour, which he instilled in his trainees. Peer-reviewed publications during his tenure numbered over 300. They included studies on systemic responses to vascular and laparoscopic surgery, tumour immunology, cytokine function, apoptosis and systemic inflammatory response syndrome and technical aspects of vascular surgery. Most of his trainees went on to senior posts in Ireland and Paddy Broe (past president of the RCSI), Austin Leahy, Cathal Kelly and Darragh Moneley joined his department as consultant colleagues. His assistance to surgeons-in-training was not confined to the high-flyers: he was also kindly, discreetly and effectively helpful to those who were struggling in their careers. He was the first in Ireland to carry out cholecystectomy by the laparoscopic route. More importantly, he established a system of training courses for surgeons to prepare them for the era of minimal access surgery. These courses were immediately successful and valued by participants who came from all over Ireland and beyond. With his colleague, Austin Leahy, he introduced laparoscopic surgery to Saudi Arabia, where they also conducted a series of training courses in the RCSI-associated hospital in Tabuk. David was a discerning observer of the mundane and the ordinary in the style of the poet Patrick Kavanagh, who was known to him and who also lived for a time in Lower Leeson Street. Additionally, he had a keen ear for the dialogue and idiom of the Dubliner and had a Beckettian sense of the whimsical and the absurd. He was therefore excellent company and a good raconteur. His tongue, while often mellifluous, could also be abrasive, salty and acid, but never forked or malicious. It was always good fun to be with him on social occasions and to hear his witty aphorisms. He was blessed in his marriage to his beloved Margaret. He delighted in the personalities and character of his children. With Margaret, he rejoiced in the many successes and achievements of David (a consultant urologist), Jonathan (a researcher and developer of medical appliances) and Lisa (a professor of molecular biology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas). David died on 29 October 2019 after a long illness: the hard pain suffered by his family during his last years as his faculties faded is surely assuaged by the joyful memories of this exceptional man.