John J. Bergan was an innovative and pioneering vascular surgeon who helped develop a separate surgical specialty for diseases of the arteries and veins. Born in Tampico, Mexico on 4 April 1927, he was the son of Ernest and Arva Yealy Bergan. His parents managed property in the area and always spoke Spanish at home, John didn’t learn to speak English until he left at the age of seven to live with his maternal grandparents in South Bend, Indiana where he attended high school. He spent a year at Yale University before being drafted into the US navy in the second world war. After initially graduating in engineering from Purdue University in 1950, he qualified in medicine from the University of Indiana in 1954. He moved to Chicago and began a surgical residency at the Wesley Memorial Hospital. In 1964 he carried out the first kidney transplant and the second organ transplantation in Illinois at Passavant Hospital. Playing a major part in the merger of the Wesley and Passavant Hospitals to form the Northwestern Memorial Hospital in 1972, he initiated the opening of their departments of transplantation and vascular surgery. It was in the same year that he recruited James S. T. Yeo to the medical school staff and the two vascular surgeons began a highly fruitful collaboration. From 1969 to 1976 he was chief of the division of surgery at Northwestern University Medical School, chief of the division of transplantation from 1976 to 1988 and Magerstadt professor of surgery from 1971 to 1988. In 1988 he left Chicago for San Diego in order to specialise solely on venous disease. He began to practice at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla and took up the post of clinical professor of surgery at the University of California at San Diego. Two years later he founded the Vein Institute of La Jolla and was one of the first doctors in the USA to treat varicose veins with foam sclerotherapy, saving patients from having to undergo vein stripping surgery. He was the author of 40 books and over 800 scholarly publications. He was renowned both nationally and internationally and served as president of many professional bodies such as the Society for Vascular Surgery. He retired in 2009 and, when he was diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy, he returned to the Chicago area to be nearer to his family while being treated for his illness. In the 1960’s when he arrived in Chicago he had discovered competitive yacht racing and became both enthusiastic and accomplished. He raced one-design boats off the lakefront and also larger cruising yachts in longer races including taking part in 37 of the Chicago Yacht Club’s Chicago to Mackinac races – thus qualifying as an ‘Island goat’. In 1951 he married Carolyn née Widener and they had three children. His daughter Elizabeth (Betsy) Bergan Altman became a sailor who won the US women’s open championship in 2007 and her sister Margaret Bergan Davis qualified in medicine. His son John Widener Bergan became a sales and marketing director in San Francisco where he died aged 54 on 30 April 2017. John J. and Carolyn divorced in 1980 and she died in 1996. In 1981 he married Elizabeth neé Molnar and they divorced in 2013. He died in a hospice in Chicago on 11 June 2014 aged 87 and was survived by his children, sister Margaret Butterworth, brother Ernest, three grandchildren and one great-grandchild.