Alfred Bingold was a consultant orthopaedic surgeon to Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup, and Lewisham Hospital. He was born in London on 27 February 1913. His father died when he was very young, and his mother, Maria Martha, née Schwager, remarried. Alfred was adopted by her second husband and took his surname. He was educated in Nuremberg, Germany, where he was praised for his athletic ability. He was brought up as a Lutheran, but being half-Jewish had to leave Germany and return to England in 1933. He passed the London University entrance examination and was accepted by the London Hospital to study medicine, where he won testimonials of merit for proficiency in anatomy, physiology and chemical pathology. He was strongly influenced by William Wright, the anatomist, and Russell John Howard, the surgeon. He swam for the university and played soccer for the hospital. Qualifying just before the outbreak of war, he completed junior posts at the London and several of the sector hospitals, where he dealt with injuries from the Blitz. He entered the RAFVR in 1942 and was posted to India. There he became ill with the symptoms of what were ultimately to develop into a generalised myopathy. In 1945 he was posted back to the RAF Hospital Rauceby, where Fenton Braithwaite was in command of the surgical division and taught him a great deal. At the end of the war he was appointed senior orthopaedic registrar at the Leeds Infirmary, where Reginald Broomhead encouraged his research into cervical ribs. In 1949 he was appointed consultant orthopaedic surgeon to Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup, and Lewisham Hospital. He ran a course for the FRCS, and published extensively. He made a special study of fractures and disorders of the upper end of the femur, on which he wrote a thesis, which gained him his PhD. He was the first to perform a prosthetic replacement for a chondrosarcoma of the upper end of the femur in a lady whom he followed up for 50 years. He was twice an Hunterian Professor. Bingold married Margaret (Peggy) Henrietta Janet Pert in 1942, a teacher. They had one son, Michael Charles, who became a solicitor. A keen gymnast and athlete as a schoolboy, Bingold continued to ski and water ski until muscular and cardiac problems caused him to stop in his mid-seventies. He died in 2001.