Michael Rodney Masser was born in Yorkshire on 23 April 1948 the son of Dr Alfred Masser MB, ChB, a medical officer of health and factory doctor and his wife, Joyce, née Silcove. His early education was at Penistone Grammar School, Sheffield, after which he entered Guy's Hospital Medical School, qualifying in 1971. He returned to Yorkshire to undertake pre-registration posts at Leeds General Infirmary before being appointed research fellow at Guy's Hospital Medical School and coming under the influence of Professor Sir Hedley Atkins and Guy Blackburn. After further junior posts he was appointed lecturer to the department of medicine at Leeds University and he passed the MRCP in 1976 and the FRCS in the following year, when he was surgical registrar at Lincoln Hospital. After passing his post-graduate examinations he decided to embark on a career in plastic surgery and served as registrar at Odstock Hospital, Salisbury, from 1981 to 1984 and as senior registrar at the same hospital from 1984 to 1990. Throughout his life he travelled extensively to study foreign techniques and in his student years had spent some time at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. More recently he had studied laser work and the use of tissue expanders having been awarded the European travelling scholarship of the British Association of Plastic Surgeons. He also won the Kay Kilner Prize for plastic surgery in 1989. He was appointed consultant plastic surgeon at Pinderfields Hospital, Wakefield, early in 1990 and approached his new post with his characteristic energy and enthusiasm. Within a few months of starting he had acquired a high reputation and was planning new developments in conjunction with his colleague Kenneth Craig Paton. On 26 November 1990 they were both attacked and stabbed to death by a mentally deranged patient who had gained access to the plastic surgery office at the hospital. He was only 42 years of age. On a visit to Yugoslavia as part of his travelling scholarship, he had met his future wife, Jasmina, also a plastic surgeon. She survived him together with their daughter Mela and was expecting their second child when he died.