Reginald Harry (Dick) Shephard was consultant neurosurgeon to the Derby Royal Infirmary. Born in 1918 he was one of 10 children and spent much of his younger days helping out on the family farm in Hampshire. Enrolling at University College London with a scholarship, he won a Rockefeller scholarship to study at Yale and passed his MD there in 1943. During the second world war he served in the RAMC. Early posts were at University College Hospital, the London Hospital and Maida Vale Hospital for Nervous Diseases. It is said that his interest in neurosurgery was influenced by Sir Hugh Cairns at Oxford and by working under Valentine Logue at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in Queen Square. In 1958 he was appointed to the consultancy at Derby Royal Infirmary, working for a time with George Clark-Maxwell, and he remained there until retirement. He died on 24 December 2010 aged 92 and was survived by his wife of 65 years, Dorothy, whom he met at UCH, five children and 14 grandchildren.