John Phillips Matthews was born on 28 July 1936. After qualifying he was a surgical registrar at the Singleton Hospital in Swansea before becoming a senior lecturer in the department of trauma and orthopaedic surgery at the Welsh National School of Medicine in Cardiff. He passed the fellowship of the college in 1968. During his career he was a consultant in trauma and orthopaedic surgery at the Morrison and Singleton Hospitals in Swansea, a consultant in hand surgery at Port Talbot Hospital and honorary clinical tutor at the Welsh National School of Medicine in Cardiff. He was a member of the British Orthopaedic Research Society and the British Society for Surgery of the Hand. At one time he worked as visiting surgeon to the National Referral Hospital in Thimphu, Bhutan. He published papers on hand injuries and particularly on the grafting of flexor tendon many years after the original injury. He died on 16 July 2019 aged 68.