Ary Blesovsky, commonly known as ‘Bles’, devoted his life to cardiothoracic surgery and was instrumental in bringing this surgery to numerous hospitals around the world. He was born in Pasvalys, Lithuania, the son of Jochiel and Pesi Blesovsky, but the family moved, in 1933, to South Africa. His father was a Hebrew language academic honoured by the Lithuanian government of the day for his contribution to the national education system. In South Africa, his father continued as a teacher and community leader and he and his wife raised and educated their four children who all went on to successful careers. Bles chose medicine as his vocation and graduated from the University of Cape Town in 1950. Due to the politics of the day, he chose to work outside of South Africa and came to the UK later that year. He worked through various roles at Highlands Hospital, Whipps Cross, Birmingham Accident and Pinderfields, before taking up a position as a senior registrar in thoracic surgery at Clare Hall Hospital. During his time at Pinderfields he met Margaret Smith, who was working as a surgical nurse; in her words their ‘eyes met over their masks’ and they married in 1955. At Clare Hall Bles decided to specialise in thoracic surgery, but felt that he should broaden his general surgical experience first, chose to do so in a developing country and took up the position of senior registrar at the University College Hospital in Ibadan, Nigeria. At the time this was the only teaching hospital in Nigeria and the work involved a broad range of advanced pathologies found in under-developed countries and the teaching of undergraduate students. The thoracic work primarily involved dealing with the surgical treatment of TB resistant to standard chemotherapy. During his time in Ibadan Bles was involved in helping Peter Konstam in his work on the ambulant treatment of sufferers of spinal TB. In 1961 Bles returned to the UK to take up the position of senior registrar in thoracic surgery at St Bartholomew’s in London. He held similar posts at Brompton Hospital and the London Chest Hospital over the following four years. These appointments broadened his training to include cardiac surgery, especially at the London Chest, where he worked for two visiting surgeons who each visited on only one day per week, leaving the management of the department and work to him, with only minimal supervision. At both the Brompton and London Chest Bles participated in the postgraduate teaching programme. In October 1965, he was awarded an Evarts A Graham travelling fellowship and a Wellcome Foundation travel grant and spent the year as a research fellow to the department of cardiovascular surgery at the Pacific Presbyterian Medical Center in San Francisco. The work involved both clinical and research elements and gave him the opportunity to visit a number of cardiac centres across the USA, attend meetings of American surgical societies and to take part in a course held at the Mayo Clinic. Towards the end of 1966 he returned to the UK, taking up a post as a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon to the Newcastle Regional Board and United Newcastle Hospitals, initially working at Shotley Bridge Hospital, the larger of the two regional thoracic centres in the North of England. His primary role was to establish an open-heart surgical programme in the region. After reorganising the department, the programme started at the beginning of 1967 and the unit grew to encompass a cardiologist, a second surgeon and a second anaesthetist by the end of 1974. In 1977 Bles moved from Shotley Bridge Hospital to the new Freeman Hospital in Newcastle upon Tyne to establish the cardiothoracic unit there. He worked at the Freeman Hospital until his retirement in 1988. During his working life Bles published many articles, including ‘The folded lung’, which identified what is commonly known as ‘Blesovsky syndrome’, in the *British Journal of Diseases of the Chest* in January 1966 (*Br J Dis Chest*. 1966 Jan;60[1]:19-22) and gave many learned papers in the UK and internationally. In 1971, he was invited by the University of Zagreb to advise on the establishment of open-heart surgery at the Rebro Hospital. Following this visit a training programme for registrars from the Rebro Hospital was established at Shotley Bridge Hospital. In 1973, he advised the department of surgery at the medical school in Skopje on starting an open-heart surgery programme. During 1973 and 1974 Bles was a member of an international panel at the 10th and 11th symposia on cardiac problems at the Martin Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg, East Germany. In 1977 and 1979 Bles was a visiting professor in the department of cardiothoracic surgery at the Medical College of Trivandrum, India. In retirement Bles and Margaret moved to the Isle of Arran and he continued to pursue his interests in marquetry, music and golf. Over more than 30 years on the island they became well known and highly regarded members of the community but regrettably had to move from the island in early 2019 due to their growing need for care and support, which was unavailable locally. They moved to Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire to be nearer their sons and their families. Bles died peacefully on 5 November 2019 after a short illness at the age of 92 and was survived by his wife, Margaret, and sons, David and Michael