Iain Gillespie was a professor of surgery at Manchester University and an honorary consultant surgeon at Manchester Royal Infirmary. Manchester, at the centre of the Industrial Revolution, and the location of one of the ‘redbrick universities’, was characterised by the championing of Nonconformist values, particularly a concern with improving the lives of the huge, often deprived, working class population. Surgeons in the northern hospitals, in the main, sympathized with these Nonconformist values and showed a healthy independence from London. Into this environment the great Edinburgh academic surgeon, Sir Charles Illingworth, spread professors of surgery with clinical and research interests, particularly in gastroenterological disease in general and peptic ulcer in particular – known as ‘Illingworth era surgeons’. Iain Gillespie was one of these surgeons. He was born on 4 September 1931 in Glasgow. His father was John Gillespie, a schoolteacher; his mother was Flora Gillespie née McQuarie. Iain was educated at Hillhead High School, subsequently entering Glasgow University to read medicine, qualifying in 1953. In 1954, after completing house officer appointments in Glasgow, he undertook National Service in the RAMC, which he completed in 1956. Iain decided upon a career in surgery and, supported by a Medical Research Council research grant, undertook a period of research in Los Angeles. This resulted in him writing a thesis for which he was awarded an MD. In 1964, he moved from his post as a lecturer in surgery at the Western infirmary in Glasgow to a similar post in Sheffield. In 1964 he returned to Glasgow as a lecturer in surgery and was subsequently promoted to a titular professorship in surgery. Having previously passed the fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1959, he passed the fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1964. In 1970 he was appointed as a professor of surgery at the University of Manchester and as an honorary consultant surgeon at Manchester Royal Infirmary, a post from which he retired in 1992. He was dean of Manchester Medical School from 1983 to 1986 and a member of a large number of professional societies and national committees. He was frequently invited to lecture overseas. It was during his tenure as professor of surgery and dean that Manchester Medical School and its existing academic staff had to cope with two revolutions. It was decided that the apparent paucity of medical services in the Northwest of England warranted a major expansion in the number of medical graduates being produced by Manchester University: this was to be dealt with by the creation of two new teaching hospitals, at Withington Hospital and Hope Hospital in Salford. Coincident with these changes were advances in the medical treatment of peptic ulcer, which massively reduced the need for surgery – the development of H2 blockers such as cimetidine, and the finding in peptic ulcers of the bacterium *helicobacter pylori*, which could be eliminated by antibiotic treatment. Both led to a major reduction in the need for surgery. The impact of these therapies and the two new departments of surgery on the teaching and clinical work of the existing department at the Manchester Royal Infirmary was enormous and it was to Gillespie’s credit that harmony between the three departments was maintained. It was a mark of the high regard in which he was held in the Manchester Medical Community that he was elected as president of the Manchester Medical Society (and served from 1994 to 1995). The above are not the only major contributions of Iain Gillespie to Manchester. The Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society is, in many ways, a guardian of the Industrial Revolution and its philosophies, and Iain joined in 1986, serving as president from 1991 to 2001. He was a brilliant raconteur and speaker and much in demand. In 1957 he married Muriel McIntyre. They had two children, one son and one daughter. In retirement he and Muriel stayed in the south Manchester suburb of Bramhall, where Iain enjoyed family life, music and golf. He died on 4 April 2022 at the age of 90.