James Emerson was born in Chesterfield in 1947, qualified at the Middlesex Hospital, where he did his house jobs, and, immediately he had registered, went to Colombia to work in an outlying district hospital. He always retained this interest in rural life in South America and a concern for the needs of aboriginal people. His surgical training was conducted in London and Wales, specialising in plastic surgery, carrying out research on skin flap survival and microsurgical vascular anastomoses. He had a special interest in cleft palate surgery, giving many disfigured children confidence and hope of a better life. He was appointed consultant plastic surgeon to the Lister Hospital, Stevenage, and later the Northern General Hospital, Sheffield. His vision of what medicine should be providing took him with a team from Sheffield to operate on the wounded of the Bosnian conflict in 1993. A childhood in the Peak District gave him a lifelong love of mountains and climbing and late in his last illness he made plans unrealised to climb the Old Man of Hoy. He died of pulmonary mesothelioma on 15 August 1995, leaving a wife Vanessa, a doctor, and three daughters, Isabel, Lydia and Jessica.