Naganath Hanamanthrao Mahindrakar was joint head of the ENT department at Royal Bolton Hospital. He was born in Dharwad, India on 3 September 1932. His father, Hanamanthrao Appaji, was a businessman selling cigarettes wholesale; his mother, Parwatbai, was a housewife. He was educated at Karnatak High School in Dharwad and Karnatak College. He went on to study medicine at the Seth Gordhandas Sunderdas Medical College in Bombay, qualifying in 1956. After junior posts in India, he went to the UK. He gained his diploma in otorhinolaryngology in 1961. He was a registrar at Bolton Royal Infirmary and then at St Nicholas’ Hospital, Plumstead, London. From 1965 to 1967 he was a senior registrar at Manchester Royal Infirmary. He then became a lecturer in otolaryngology at Manchester University. In 1968, he was appointed as a consultant in ear, nose and throat surgery at Bolton Royal Infirmary. From 1970 until his retirement in 1997 he was joint head of the ENT department. He was chairman of the Bolton Deaf Society from 1980. He was also involved in other charity work. Through Rotary International he successfully established at blood bank in his home town of Dharwad. He was presented with Rotary International’s Paul Harris award for ‘service above self’. Outside medicine, he enjoyed golf, bridge and painting. In 1965, he married Ursula Patricia Quirk, a nurse. They had two sons – Peter Raj and Arwin Francis. After his first wife’s death, he married Therese O’Grady, a teacher, in 1994. He died following a heart attack at his home in Chorley, Lancashire on 11 July 2014. He was 81.