Kenneth Wise was a consultant trauma and orthopaedic surgeon at South Buckinghamshire NHS Trust. He was born on 7 May 1940 in London to Lily Wise née Tate and Mark Henry Wise, a shopkeeper. He was educated at Sir George Monoux Grammar School, Walthamstow, London and, although offered a place at Oxford University, did his medical training at St Bartholomew’s from 1958 to 1963. After a thorough grounding in general surgery at Barts, in Norwich and in Luton and Dunstable, Ken did two years (from 1971 to 1973) neurosurgery at Oxford and Guy’s and Maudsley hospitals. He then settled on orthopaedics. He was an orthopaedic registrar at Southampton from 1973 to 1974 and a senior registrar on the Wessex orthopaedic training rotation at Southampton, Portsmouth and Treloar hospitals. He also spent some time in Louisville, Kentucky, on a clinical attachment in hand surgery with Harold Kleinert and Graham Lister, and two spells working in Uganda for World Orthopaedic Concern. He was appointed as a consultant surgeon in 1979, where he became department lead. He was president of the Chiltern Medical Society in 2002 and a committee member for the Oxford region. Ken wrote some key publications, including ‘Von Hippel-Lindau’s disease and phaeochromocytoma’ (*Br Med J.* 1971 Feb 20;1[5746]:441), ‘The anatomy of the metacarpo-phalangeal joints, with observations of the aetiology of ulnar drift’ (*J Bone Joint Surg Br*. 1975 Nov;57[4]:485-90), several papers on antibiotic prophylaxis in joint replacement and ‘Cine radiography in cervical spondylosis as a means of determining the level for anterior fusion’ (*J Bone Joint Surg Br.* 1982;64[4]:399-404). After retiring from the NHS, he taught anatomy to Oxford medical students and for the Royal College of Surgeons of England. He gained a distinction in an MSc in forensic anthropology, becoming a research fellow at Bournemouth University. Finally, he gave lectures to medical and non-medical audiences on Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci. He also wrote a book on the life of Vesalius *All else is mortal* (CreateSpace Independent Publishing, 2014) and a history of anatomy, which will be published posthumously. He met his wife, Julia Frances Oxenham, a nurse at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, and they married in 1968. Ken had three lovely daughters, Catherine, Charlotte and Victoria, and six grandchildren. He was an avid sailor, tennis player and skier and enjoyed shooting on the Hampden Estate in Buckinghamshire. He died on 16 November 2024. His intelligence, kindness and sense of humour will be missed by all who knew him.