Search Results for Medical Obituaries - Narrowed by: Hand surgeon

First Title value, for Searching Muir, Fiona May (1971 - 2015)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Sarah Gillam
Publication Date 2015-02-16 2017-06-09
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E006000-E006999/E006700-E006799
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/378977378977
Occupation Hand surgeon Orthopaedic surgeon Plastic surgeon Plastic and reconstructive surgeon Trauma surgeon
Details Fiona Muir was a consultant orthopaedic hand surgeon at the Sussex Orthopaedic Treatment Centre. She was born on 9 August 1971 and studied medicine at Bristol University, qualifying in 1994. She gained her FRCS in 1998 and prior to her consultant appointment was a specialist registrar at the Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead. She died on 3 February 2015 at the age of 43.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006794
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Wise, Kenneth Stanley (1940 - 2023)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2023-12-19
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E010000-E010999/E010500-E010599
Occupation Hand surgeon Trauma surgeon Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Kenneth Stanley Wise was a consultant in orthopaedic surgery at Amersham and Wycombe hospitals.
Resource Identifier RCS: E010584
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Wilkinson, Alwyn (1925 - 2016)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Sarah Gillam
Publication Date 2017-07-12 2020-07-02
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009300-E009399
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/381545381545
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon Trauma surgeon Hand surgeon
Details Alwyn Wilkinson was a consultant orthopaedic and trauma surgeon at Oldham Hospital. He was born on 9 March 1925. His mother’s maiden name was Day. He grew up in Hollinwood, Oldham and studied medicine at Manchester University. He qualified in 1949 and gained his FRCS in 1961. He trained in Manchester and Oldham, and worked in hospitals in Ashton and Bolton. In 1970, he returned to Oldham as a consultant orthopaedic surgeon specialising in treating hand injuries. He was a fellow of the British Orthopaedic Association and a member of the British Society for Surgery of the Hand. He retired in 1989. In 1961, he married Ursula M Atherton. They had a son, Robert, a daughter, Claire, and five grandchildren. Predeceased by his wife in 1997, Alwyn Wilkinson died on 13 February 2016. He was 90.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009362
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Barton, Nicholas James (1935 - 2023)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2024-03-14
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E010000-E010999/E010500-E010599
Occupation Hand surgeon Orthopaedic surgeon Trauma surgeon
Details Nicholas Barton was a consultant orthopaedic and hand surgeon at Queen’s Medical Centre and Harlow Wood Hospital, Nottingham.
Resource Identifier RCS: E010598
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Dunkerley, David Russell (1933 - )

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2023-03-07
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E010000-E010999/E010200-E010299
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon Hand surgeon
Details David Russell Dunkerley was a consultant orthopaedic and hand surgeon in Bath. This is a draft obituary. If you have any information about this surgeon or are interested in writing this obituary, please email lives@rcseng.ac.uk
Resource Identifier RCS:E010217
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Merryweather, Reginald ( - 2002)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-11-18
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008700-E008799
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380966380966
Occupation Hand surgeon Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Reginald Merryweather trained at Guy's Hospital and after junior jobs joined the RAMC. After the war he specialised in orthopaedics, becoming senior registrar at the Princess Elizabeth Orthopaedic Hospital in Exeter. He was appointed consultant orthopaedic surgeon in Gloucester. His interests included hand surgery and knee replacement, on which he published. He died on 31 August 2002.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008783
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Singer, Martin (1921 - 2015)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2022-01-28
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E010000-E010999/E010000-E010099
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon Hand surgeon
Details Martin Singer was a pioneering hand surgeon who established the first hand clinic in South Africa at the Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town. This is a draft obituary. If you have any information about this surgeon or are interested in writing this obituary, please email lives@rcseng.ac.uk
Resource Identifier RCS: E010064
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Arafa, Mohamed Aly Mohamed (1950 - 2015)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Sarah Gillam
Publication Date 2015-04-17 2018-03-08
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E007000-E007999/E007100-E007199
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/379295379295
Occupation Hand surgeon Orthopaedic surgeon Trauma surgeon
Details Mohamed Aly Mohamed Arafa was a consultant in trauma and orthopaedic surgery at Worcestershire Royal Hospital. His sub-specialty was hand surgery. He was born on 9 May 1950 and gained his MB BCh from Cairo University in 1973 and his FRCS in 1978. Prior to his consultant appointment, he was a registrar in Bristol and a senior registrar at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, Stanmore. Mohamed Arafa died on 7 March 2015, aged 64.
Resource Identifier RCS: E007112
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Lake, Max Emory (1924 - 2009)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2021-02-10
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009900-E009999
Occupation Hand surgeon
Details Max Lake was a hand surgeon in Sydney, New South Wales and renowned winemaker. This is a draft obituary. If you have any information about this surgeon or are interested in writing this obituary, please email lives@rcseng.ac.uk
Resource Identifier RCS: E009924
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Mahaffey, Peter John (1948- 2021)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2022-02-04
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E010000-E010999/E010000-E010099
Occupation Plastic surgeon Hand surgeon
Details Peter Mahaffey was a consultant plastic and hand surgeon at Bedford Hospital. This is a draft obituary. If you have any information about this surgeon or are interested in writing this obituary, please email lives@rcseng.ac.uk
Resource Identifier RCS: E010077
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Robertson, Gordon Andrew (1940 - 2021)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2022-04-12
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E010000-E010999/E010100-E010199
Occupation Plastic surgeon Hand surgeon
Details Gordon Robertson was a specialist in plastic surgery in Winnipeg and an associate professor at the University of Manitoba’s faculty of medicine. This is a draft obituary. If you have any information about this surgeon or are interested in writing this obituary, please email lives@rcseng.ac.uk.
Resource Identifier RCS: E010109
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Matthewson, Murray Hugh (1944 - 2018)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2024-01-11
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E010000-E010999/E010500-E010599
Occupation Hand surgeon Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Murray Matthewson was a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Cambridge and a former president of the British Society for Surgery of the Hand. This is a draft obituary. If you have any information about this surgeon or are interested in writing this obituary, please email lives@rcseng.ac.uk
Resource Identifier RCS: E010588
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Bendeich, Geoffrey Joseph (1928 - 2006)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Sarah Gillam
Publication Date 2020-10-19
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009800-E009899
Occupation Hand surgeon Orthopaedic surgeon Specialist in sports medicine
Details Geoffrey Joseph Bendeich was a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at the Royal Brisbane Hospital, Queensland, Australia. He was born on 30 December 1928, the son of Joseph and Elizabeth Bendeich and attended the Anglican Church Grammar School in Brisbane, where he played rugby in the first 15. He studied medicine at the University of Queensland and qualified in 1951. He went to the UK for further training in surgery and gained his FRCS in 1957. In 1958 he married Diana Austin, an English doctor he had met when they were both working at a hospital in London. They went back to Queensland, Australia and lived in Ascot, Brisbane. Bendeich became an orthopaedic surgeon at the Royal Brisbane Hospital, specialising in the emerging fields of hand surgery and sports medicine. He was a founder member of the Australian Hand Surgery Society. He and Diana had six children: twins Richard and Julie, Graham, Tim, Mark and Suzie. Bendeich died on 9 April 2006. He was 77.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009803
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Bolton, Harold (1918 - 2015)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Sarah Gillam
Publication Date 2016-01-21 2018-11-28
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009000-E009099
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/381214381214
Occupation Hand surgeon Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Harold Bolton was an orthopaedic and hand surgeon in Manchester and Stockport. He was born in Blackpool on 15 August 1918. His father, Alexander Black Bolton, was the managing director of a confectionary company; his mother, Nina Bolton née Houldsworth, was also a director of the company. He attended Hutton Grammar School and then King Edward VII School in Lytham St Annes, and went on to study medicine at Manchester Medical School. He gained a BSc in anatomy and physiology in 1939 and qualified in July 1942 with the Butterworth medical prize and the John Henry Agnew prize in children’s diseases. He was a house surgeon at Manchester Royal Infirmary to Sir Harry Platt. From 1942 to 1946 he served in the RAMC, in India, Burma and Palestine. He left the Army with the rank of acting lieutenant colonel. Following his demobilisation, he returned to Manchester as a registrar at the Royal Infirmary. He gained his FRCS in 1948 and from 1948 to 1951 was a senior registrar at the Royal Infirmary under Platt, David Griffiths and John Charnley. He then spent a year as a surgical fellow in Chicago working with Sumner L Koch. In 1952, he was appointed as a consultant orthopaedic surgeon to the north Manchester group of hospitals. Two years later, he became a consultant orthopaedic surgeon for the Stockport and Buxton group. In 1960, he established the Manchester region hand surgery centre at the Devonshire Royal Hospital in Buxton. In June 1967, he dealt with casualties from the Stockport air crash, when an aeroplane carrying holidaymakers from Mallorca to Manchester airport crashed into an area close to the Stockport town centre. He was a consultant hand surgeon in Stockport and Buxton from 1980 to 1985, when he retired from the NHS. He carried on in private practice until 1987 and as a member of the Medical Appeals Tribunal until 1991. He was president of the British Society for Surgery of the Hand in 1983. He was a council member of the British Orthopaedic Association and a fellow of Manchester Medical Society. At university he played tennis, fives and hockey. He later enjoyed fishing and golf, and was president of Romiley Golf Club in 1983. In 1949, he married Barbara. They had two sons – Martin Alexander and Robert Andrew. Harold Bolton died on 10 December 2015. He was 97.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009031
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Robinson, Donald Neil (1924 - 2000)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Sarah Gillam
Publication Date 2016-07-27 2019-12-02
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009100-E009199
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/381373381373
Occupation Plastic surgeon Hand surgeon
Details Donald Neil Robinson was a plastic surgeon in Adelaide, South Australia. He was born on 28 October 1924 in Salisbury, South Australia. His father, Edwin Alexander Robinson, was a bank manager; his mother was Mary Robinson née Nicholson. From 1939 to 1941 Robinson attended Scotch College in Adelaide and then went on to Adelaide University to study medicine. At university, he played tennis and football. He qualified in 1948. After junior posts, he went to the UK, where he trained in plastic surgery at Odstock Hospital, Salisbury, Wiltshire under John Netterville Barron from 1955 to 1957. He gained his FRCS in 1954 and his FRACS in 1957. On his return to Australia, he was a visiting plastic surgeon at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, where he founded and headed the plastic and reconstructive surgical unit, and also a visiting surgeon at the Adelaide Children’s Hospital. He was a board member of St Andrew’s Hospital, Adelaide from 1988 to 1992. For ten years, from 1982 to 1992, he went on annual visits to Brunei and Malaysia with the Adelaide Children’s Hospital. He was a member of the court of examiners in plastic surgery at the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons from 1972 to 1982. He was a foundation member of the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons and chairman (from 1972 to 1975), and a foundation member of the Australian Hand Surgery Society and president (from 1976 to 1977). Outside medicine he played golf: he was captain of the Royal Adelaide Golf Club in 1980 and 1981, and president from 1991 to 1994. He also enjoyed bridge, water sports, skiing, sailing and fishing. He farmed and was a member of a race horse breeding syndicate. He was a council member of his old school, Scotch College, from 1970 to 1979. In February 1955, he married Eunice Brooke, a nurse and midwife. They had four children – Stuart James, Jennifer Jane, Mary Ann and Susan Elizabeth. Donald Neil Robinson died on 7 August 2000. He was 75.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009190
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Cobbett, John Robey (1930 - 2016)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Roger Green
Publication Date 2016-02-19 2016-04-15
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009000-E009099
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/381243381243
Occupation Hand surgeon Plastic surgeon Plastic and reconstructive surgeon Reconstructive surgeon
Details John Robey Cobbett was a consultant plastic surgeon at Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead, and Lewisham Hospital. He was born on 5 May 1930, the third son of Claude Racster Cobbett, a company director, and Constance Evelyn Anne Cobbett née Robey. From the age of four, following the death of his mother, his step-mother steered him into medicine. While she was not qualified herself, her father and three of her siblings were doctors. He attended Charterhouse School, where he won prizes in physics and chemistry, and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. His clinical studies were undertaken at the London Hospital. He was a house surgeon at Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead, where he saw the work being done by Sir Archibald McIndoe and was inspired to become a plastic and reconstructive surgeon. He trained in general surgery with Sir Alan Parks at the Royal Free Hospital, gaining his FRCS in 1962, and then returned to East Grinstead as a senior registrar in plastic surgery. He was appointed as a consultant plastic surgeon at East Grinstead and Lewisham in 1968. As part of the research programme at East Grinstead, John Cobbett became interested in the techniques of small vessel anastomosis. He won a Moynihan travelling scholarship in 1966, which enabled him to visit other units around the world with similar interests. He is credited as being one of the first to have completed a single stage microvascular transfer of a great toe to reconstruct a thumb in 1968. He was a founder member of the British Society for Surgery of the Hand. He served on the council of the British Association of Plastic Surgeons from 1975 to 1977, and was honorary secretary, also from 1975 to 1977. John married Pamela Irma Bower in 1952 and they had three children, Peter John Robey, Susan Robey and David Charles Robey, six grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. He retired in 1995 to enjoy his hobbies of boat building, carpentry and jewellery making. Sadly, he developed Pick's disease in 2005. John Cobbett died on 19 January 2016, at the age of 85.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009060
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Harrison, Stewart Hamilton (1912 - 2011)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Sarah Gillam
Publication Date 2011-12-09 2015-03-06
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001700-E001799
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/373893373893
Occupation Hand surgeon Plastic surgeon Plastic and reconstructive surgeon
Details Stewart Harrison was a leading consultant plastic surgeon and a former president of the British Society for Surgery of the Hand. He was born in Highgate, London, on 15 July 1912, the second son of Archibald Harrison, a manufacturer, and Marion Harrison née Taylor. Both his parents died when he was a young child and he was brought up by his maternal grandparents in Dunblane, Scotland. He was educated at Stanley House School, Bridge of Allan, and then studied medicine and dentistry at Edinburgh University. He was a house surgeon at Ancoats Hospital, Manchester. During the Second World War he spent five years as a major in the Royal Army Medical Corps, in Nigeria and in north-west Europe. Following his demobilisation, he joined the Birmingham Accident Hospital and started his career in plastic surgery. He trained with Sir Harold Gillies and Rainsford Mowlem at Mount Vernon Hospital, and spent much of his career at Wexham Park Hospital in Berkshire, where he developed the plastic surgery unit there. Throughout his career he pioneered several new surgical techniques. In 1949 he and Gillies carried out an innovative operation to reconstruct the face of a patient born with a recessed upper jaw, which involved moving the middle third of the face forward. Later, he developed an operation to help children born with upper limb deformities, particularly as a result of their mothers using Thalidomide. He transferred the index finger to the normal position of the thumb, enabling the patient to pinch and hold, meaning the child could write and feed themselves. He also improved treatments for people with rheumatoid arthritis, finding ways of stabilising joints, and for people with tendon injuries to the finger. In 1979 he was a Hunterian professor at the Royal College of Surgeons. He was a founder member of the Hand Club, which became the British Society for Surgery of the Hand in 1968. He was president of the Society in 1972 and of the British Association of Plastic Surgeons in 1976. After he had retired from the NHS, he became the first president of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons. In 1943 he married Phyllis Eustace and they had a son. Stewart Harrison died on 12 May 2011, aged 98.
Resource Identifier RCS: E001710
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Wakefield, Alan Ross (1917 - 1985)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Brian Morgan
Publication Date 2011-11-30 2013-04-24
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001600-E001699
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/373859373859
Occupation Hand surgeon Plastic surgeon Plastic and reconstructive surgeon
Details Alan Ross Wakefield, known as 'The Vicar', was an Australian plastic and hand surgeon of international renown. He will be particularly remembered for writing, with Sir Benjamin Keith Rank, the classic text *Surgery of repair as applied to hand injuries, etc* (Edinburgh/London, E & S Livingstone), first published in 1953 with three further editions. The importance and value of this book extends beyond 'the hand': the classification the authors introduced of wounds into 'tidy' and 'untidy' continues to be cited in most papers and books on trauma. The son of George Thomas and Florence Ann Wakefield, he was educated at Melbourne Grammar School and then at the medical school at Melbourne, qualifying in 1941. On completion of his basic training, he joined the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps and served in New Guinea, Brisbane and Heidelberg Military Hospital, where he joined the No 2 maxillofacial and plastic unit. It was here he learnt his plastic surgery from Rank. Wakefield ended his military service in 1946 as a captain and with the Pacific Star medal. Following his demobilisation, he became an honorary assistant plastic surgeon at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, and passed his MS and FRACS in 1947. He then travelled to the United Kingdom and spent a year training in plastic surgery. He passed his FRCS in 1948. He returned to Melbourne, as a plastic surgeon at the Royal Children's Hospital and at the Repatriation Hospital, Heidelberg. As head of the plastic surgery department at the Royal Children's Hospital he successfully developed the hospital's reputation, especially for cleft lip repair. As well as his epic work on hand injuries, he published work on cleft lip and palate, and on intersex problems. On trips to the United States he developed many long-lasting contacts. In 1964 he was invited to give the founder's lecture at the American Society for Surgery of the Hand. In later years, he retired from private practice, but retained his Royal Children's Hospital appointment. When his role there ended, he became medical director of the Victorian Plastic Surgery Unit. He was also a farmer, and bred sheep and cattle. He was president of the Murray Grey Beef Cattle Society, and did much to develop this new breed of beef cattle. He also grew roses and was a keen exhibitor and show judge. He married twice. By his first wife, Mary, he had four children and six grandchildren. His second wife was Valerie. Alan Ross Wakefield died following a long illness on 22 July 1985 at his home in San Remo, Victoria, Australia.
Resource Identifier RCS: E001676
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Attara, George Antoine (1945 - 2018)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Hiro Tanaka
Publication Date 2019-01-15 2019-07-03
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009500-E009599
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon Trauma surgeon Hand surgeon
Details George Attara was a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Gwynedd Hospital in Bangor, Wales. He was born in Cairo, Egypt on 29 December 1945 to an Egyptian father, Antoine Karim Attara, a merchant, and a Greek mother, Anastasia Attara née Mazarakis. This background gave him a deep appreciation of different cultures and the ability to speak multiple languages, including Arabic, Greek and French. He had an identical twin, Karim, also an orthopaedic surgeon, who is working in Dubai and is a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. He and his brother were educated at the French Collège des Pères Jésuites Primary School and the Collège De La Salle in Cairo. They entered Cairo University to study medicine together in 1964 and graduated in 1970. During his university years, George was an avid music player, playing the guitar, keyboard and accordion. It was at during time that The Beatles were changing popular music globally and their band, Magic Fingers, was inspired by their style. Their favourite opening number was ‘Help’. George was also a competitive cyclist and won several trophies during that time. George completed his internship at Cairo University and moved to the UK in 1972. His first post in the UK was at the Royal South Hants Hospital in Southampton with James Stokes Ellis and it was here that he developed his interest in hand surgery. Having completed his FRCS and his orthopaedic training in County Durham, George spent the first decade of his career in the Middle East as a consultant orthopaedic surgeon in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. From 1990 to 1991, working at the Northern Armed Forces Hospital in Saudi Arabia, he was part of the support effort for Desert Storm. He was subsequently appointed as chief of orthopaedic surgery at the King Abdulaziz University Hospital in Jeddah. In 1993, he returned back to UK when he was offered a post at the Princess Alexandra Royal Air Force Hospital in Wroughton. His military experience in Saudi Arabia and RAF Wroughton gave him specialist expertise in the management of polytrauma and war injuries. Throughout his career, he was always a passionate teacher and trainer. His unique, supportive style of training was ahead of his time and was inspirational to all those who trained with him. After the closure of RAF Wroughton, George moved to Gwynedd Hospital in 1996 and trained many generations of Welsh trainees until his retirement in 2007. He is remembered by those fortunate enough to learn from him as ‘Boss’ and lives on in their hearts and minds. I feel privileged to have been one those surgeons who were inspired by him and to this day, I still maintain the three principles of practice he told me on my first day as his registrar: ‘Be kind to your patients, be kind to your trainees and enjoy life.’ I have never seen so many patients admire and trust their surgeon in the way they did with George. George died peacefully at his home on 23 September 2018 aged 72. He was survived by his wife Judy, his brother, Karim, and his sister, Mary.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009556
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Conolly, William Bruce (1935 - 2017)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Tina Craig
Publication Date 2017-03-16 2021-01-08
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009300-E009399
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/381501381501
Occupation Hand surgeon General surgeon
Details William (Bruce) Conolly was a pioneering hand surgeon. Born in Molong, New South Wales on 1 February 1935, he was the eldest son of William Arnold Conolly, a doctor who was responsible for founding the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. His mother Ruth née King was a direct descendant of Governor Phillip King. After attending the Sydney Church of England Grammar School he studied at the Sydney University Medical School graduating MB BS in 1959. While there he won the Haswell prize in his first year and the Credit prize in his final year. For his National Service he trained with the Royal Australian Air Force. After house jobs at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital from 1959 to 1960 he took up the post of tutor in anatomy and pathology at the University of Sydney for a year where he was mentored by Sir John Loewenthall. In the early 1960s he travelled to the UK and worked in a Liverpool hospital with Charles Alexander Wells and John Alfred Shepherd. He passed the fellowship of the college in 1963, became a fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in 1965 and the American College of Surgeons in 1971. In America he worked with John Englebert Dunphy and F. William Blaisdell at the University of California in San Francisco. On his return to Sydney he became a consultant surgeon at the Sydney Hospital and was the driving force behind their world renowned hand unit. It was the first of its kind in Australia and for this he was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 1994. He was a founder member of the Australian Hand Club of which he became president from 1996 to 1998. In the UK he had been a lecturer to the St John Ambulance and he continued to do this for the Australian branch. Over the years he developed a strong relationship with Myanmar and from 2000 onwards Bruce and his wife Dr Joyce Conolly made frequent visits there. After his notional retirement from medical practice in 2013 they set up the Myanmar Australia Conolly Foundation as a humanitarian organisation with the aim of improving the country’s medical education. While there he lectured to Myanmar doctors and nurses and the couple often visited remote villages to carry out informal consultations with those who had no hope of seeing a doctor. He had a special relationship with Yangon General Hospital and donated to them significant books from his personal library. He married Dr Joyce Lavan in January 1966; both her parents were also medically qualified. They had four children: John, Christine, Bruce and Sarah. At University he had won a blue for tennis and squash and he continued to play both games into his retirement – a friend remembers him playing much younger players at the Australian Club in Yangon in the early 2000s. In private he was a deeply religious man. He died on 21 February 2017 aged 82, survived by his wife and family.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009318
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Lester, John Garland (1933 - 2017)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Allan Panting
Publication Date 2017-04-21 2017-10-25
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009300-E009399
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/381521381521
Occupation Hand surgeon Orthopaedic and trauma surgeon
Details John Lester was born in Christchurch, the eldest child of Stephen Lester (a stock and station agent) and Eleanor West-Watson (secretary to her father, Bishop of Christchurch). He had a younger sister, Elizabeth, and brother, Michael. John commenced school at Fendalton Open Air Primary School and then attended Christs College. At College John excelled at sport, playing rugby for the 1st XV and cricket for the 1st XI - as captain in his final year. He went on to represent Canterbury in the Brabin Cup team. In 1951 he commenced at Otago University gaining entry to the Otago Medical School the following year. During his time in Dunedin he resided at Selwyn College, his entry into which was no doubt helped by his grandfather being the Anglican Archbishop of New Zealand. John graduated MB ChB in 1956 and the next year worked in Greymouth spending time with the then legendary West Coast surgeon, Steve Barclay. With his appetite for surgery stimulated, John sailed for the United Kingdom working his passage as a cargo ship doctor. In England John worked at the Royal Free and Marsden Hospitals gaining experience in general surgery. He subsequently obtained a position at the National Orthopaedic Hospital where he obtained training in orthopaedic surgery. His final three years in the UK were spent in Cambridge at Addenbrookes Hospital. He completed his FRCS in 1961. While working at Addenbrookes he met Elizabeth Hewitt, a member of the nursing staff. Her father, impressed that John had obtained a British Fellowship before the age of 30, supported the relationship, despite their sailing for New Zealand the day following their wedding. On his return to New Zealand in 1964, John was initially employed as a senior orthopaedic registrar at Christchurch Hospital. In 1966 he was appointed to a position as full-time consultant. This subsequently became a part-time appointment and he practised in both the public and private sectors until he retired from his public hospital appointment in 1992. It was while employed in the public hospital that John developed his interest in hand surgery. When he retired from his hospital appointment he pursued full-time private practice. His workload which included surgery, consulting and medico-legal work was intentionally slowly reduced, until he fully retired in 2000. In 1973 John, with the support of Swiss colleague and friend Prof Hardy Weber, organised the first hands on AO course to be held in NZ. This began what would become a major change in fracture management in New Zealand. At a time when the antero-lateral approach to the hip for arthroplasty was almost universally used, John promoted the posterior approach and this was progressively more widely adopted. John provided strong support to Alastair Rothwell as he liaised with the plastic surgeons in 1982 in the formation of the Hand Unit. With his increasing interest in hand surgery, John was involved in the formation of the New Zealand Hand Society in 1976, serving on the Executive and as President in the early 1980s. He was responsible for changing its name to The New Zealand Society for Surgery of the Hand. John was also a member of the New Zealand Orthopaedic Association's Executive Committee and served as Secretary of that Association from 1976-80. John had a kind, considerate and generous nature. He was a conservative surgeon, a congenial colleague who was totally committed to his patients (not infrequently at the cost of some personal discomfort) and cared greatly for those who worked closely with him. With the prompting of Liz, a keen skier, John commenced this sport following his return to New Zealand and distinguished himself by sustaining an ankle fracture soon after commencing employment. In retirement John remained very active, playing golf regularly and well and enjoying gardening. He devoted time to learning silver-smithing and picture framing. John is survived and greatly missed by his wife Liz, children Ben, Richard, Stephen and Tamara, sister Elizabeth, and brother Michael, and his 10 grandchildren.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009338
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Shelswell, John Hubert (1919 - 2002)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-12-07
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008900-E008999
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/381111381111
Occupation Hand surgeon Orthopaedic surgeon
Details John Shelswell was born in Warwickshire on 19 January 1919. His father, Henry Bower Shelswell, was a hospital administrator, his mother was Lily née Johnson. He was educated at King Edward VII School, Sheffield, and Manchester Grammar School, before going on to read medicine at Manchester University. After house jobs he did a series of junior posts under A M Boyd, Sir Harry Platt and Sir John Charnley in Manchester, followed by service in the RAMC in Europe. On demobilisation he returned to complete his training in orthopaedics under Sir Herbert Seddon and J I P James at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital. He was appointed as a consultant to the Southend General Hospital Group in 1955, where he developed a special interest in hand surgery and sports injuries. He was chairman of his hospital medical committee and of the Essex area BMA. He retired in 1984. In 1951 he married Cicely Butterworth, by whom he had a son, Robert Oliver, and daughter, Anne Elizabeth. There are five grandchildren. Formerly a keen sailor, he was a skilled photographer and gardener and, until diabetic neuropathy limited his activities, a keen golfer. He died from coronary thrombosis on 27 February 2002.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008928
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching France, William Gordon (1912 - 1998)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-10-29
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008600-E008699
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380783380783
Occupation Hand surgeon Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Gordon France was a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Lewisham Hospital and Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup. He was born in Heckmondwike, west Yorkshire, on 12 July 1912. His father was a cabinet maker and joiner, and his mother, Harriet Alice née Firth, a dressmaker. From Heckmondwike Grammar School, he attended Leeds University Medical School. After junior posts, he joined the RAMC at the beginning of the war, and was commanding a military hospital in Crete when the island was overrun by the Germans. All the staff and patients were taken prisoner and transferred to a camp in Germany. There he continued to be the camp's medical officer until the defeat of Germany. On demobilisation he studied for the final FRCS, which he passed a year later. He did his orthopaedic training in Leeds, where he was orthopaedic tutor to the university, before becoming consultant to Lewisham Hospital and Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup. His main interest was in the surgery of the hand, but he also published on chronic haemorrhagic arthropathy of haemophilia. He married Madge in 1948. They had two sons, Philip and Oliver, and two daughters, Elizabeth and Sarah, none of whom went into medicine. There were seven grandchildren. Formerly a keen pianist, his latter days were overtaken by Parkinson's disease which sapped his strength completely. He died in Beckenham on 24 November 1998.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008600
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Flatt, Adrian Ede (1921 - 2017)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Sarah Gillam
Publication Date 2018-01-17
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009400-E009499
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/381812381812
Occupation Hand surgeon Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Adrian Ede Flatt was a pioneering hand surgeon and chairman of the department of orthopedics at Baylor University Medical Center, Dallas, Texas. He was born in Frinton-on-Sea, Essex on 26 August 1921, the son of Leslie Neeve Flatt, a mechanical engineer with the Indian Railways who during Second World War ran the entire railway system in India, and Barbara Flatt née Allen, a homemaker and commercial artist. The Flatt family had been farmers in East Anglia since the Viking invasion. When he was six months old, he was taken by his mother by sea to India, where he stayed until he was two. He caught dengue fever as a baby and developed rickets as a very young child in India. He and his sister Penny later lived with their grandmother in the family home in England. They saw their parents infrequently – their father would come home every three or four years or so for six months and their mother would travel back and forth from India to England, staying six months in each country. Flatt attended Haileybury College, where he won the botany prize and was an officer in the Officers’ Training Corps and a captain of the rowing and rugby teams. He studied medicine at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge during the Second World War, cramming three years’ study into two and, during his time-off, helping in London hospitals. He was also a member of the Home Guard. He arrived at Cambridge knowing he wanted to be a surgeon and, after hearing an introductory lecture by Sir John Ryle, regius professor of physic, on hands, determined he would focus on hand surgery. He went on to his clinical studies at the London Hospital, where he worked through the Blitz; the hospital sometimes received hundreds of casualties each night and was directly hit by bombs 13 times. He qualified in 1946. He was first a houseman on the medical unit at the London Hospital, and then trained in general and orthopaedic surgery under Sir Reginald Watson-Jones and Sir Henry Osmond-Clark. He also completed a year of training in plastic surgery under Thomas Pomfret Kilner at Stoke Mandeville Hospital. From 1949 to 1950 he was a squadron leader in charge of No 3 Parachute Surgical Rescue Team. The team went out to Ceylon, where he was surgeon to all the armed forces on the island, stationed at the RAF services hospital in Negombo. He was also a visiting surgeon to RAF stations throughout Ceylon, Singapore, Malaya, Indochina and Hong Kong. After his military service, he went back to England, where he taught anatomy at Cambridge and the Royal College of Surgeons of England. He gained his FRCS in 1953 and, in 1954, was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to the USA to train in the evolving field of hand surgery. For three months he travelled by train across the USA, visiting hand surgeons in the major cities and stayed with Sterling Bunnell in San Francisco. He then had a six-month fellowship in New York at the Roosevelt Hospital and a three-month fellowship in New Orleans. He returned to the UK and continued working in orthopaedics as a first assistant, but after a year was invited to Iowa City to start the first academic hand surgery unit in the USA, as professor of orthopedics and anatomy and director of the division of hand surgery at the University of Iowa. At Iowa, he directed major research programs in congenital anomalies and biomechanics of the hand and carried out extensive clinical research into rheumatoid arthritis. He developed two patents – for artificial finger and wrist joints. He stayed in Iowa for 22 years and then moved to Connecticut as chief of surgery at Norwalk Hospital and a clinical professor of orthopedics at Yale University, responsible for teaching hand surgery. After three years, in 1982, he relocated to Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, Texas as full-time chief of orthopedic surgery. He held this position until his retirement from active clinical practice in 1992, when he was named chief emeritus at the George Truett James Orthopedic Institute at Baylor Dallas. From 1964 to 1991 he was also a consultant in hand surgery for the US Air Force. During his career he trained 50 fellows in hand surgery from 14 countries. He wrote nearly 200 articles in peer-reviewed journals and three books on conditions and medical treatment of the hand. In 1976 he became president of the American Society for Surgery of the Hand and was instrumental in establishing the *Journal of Hand Surgery*, for which he served as editor-in-chief from 1980 to 1990. He received many honours and awards, including in 1972 the Kappa Delta Award for his outstanding orthopaedic research and, in 1992, was named as an International Pioneer of Hand Surgery by the International Federation of Societies for Surgery of the Hand. He was an honorary member of several hand societies across the world and was a visiting professor at many institutions. He was a Hunterian Professor at the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1962 and gave a lecture on ‘Surgical rehabilitation of the rheumatoid hand’. He enjoyed travel and reading. He also cast hands of famous people from around the world, including seven former presidents, actors, celebrities and athletes. These are now on display at the Adrian E Flatt MD Hand Collection at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. He was married three times. In 1955 he married Adele Fulton, a nurse from New York. They had a son, Andrew James. His wife died in 1975 and in 1977 he married Carol Ann Connors. This marriage ended in divorce in 1988 and two years later he married Judith K Johnson, a lawyer. His son Andrew died in 1990. Adrian Ede Flatt died on 14 October 2017. He was 96.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009408
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Schjelderup, Halfdan ( - 1991)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-10-01
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008300-E008399
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380497380497
Occupation Hand surgeon Plastic surgeon Plastic and reconstructive surgeon
Details On Dr Schjelderup's admission to the Honorary Fellowship in 1982, the following citation was delivered by Ian Muir FRCS: 'Dr Schjelderup graduated in medicine in Oslo in 1938 and started training in surgery in Bergen, but in the following year he joined the Royal Norwegian Navy and served during the war, and for this service he received his country's commendation in the form of the Norwegian Service Medal. After the cessation of hostilities the occupying authorities disapproved of his activities and in December 1944 he had to leave Norway and transfer to Britain by the clandestine and dangerous route known as the 'Shetland bus'. Shortly after his arrival in Britain he decided to train in reconstructive surgery and he joined Sir Harold Gillies at Rooksdown House in Basingstoke for three years and returned to Norway in1947. 'During his time in England he and his charming wife Ida made many friends and many British and Commonwealth patients now owe their lives and their livelihood to his skill and care. 'In 1946 he attended a dinner at the College at which Lord Webb-Johnson was the guest of honour and it was then that the seed was sown which grew to be the British Association of Plastic Surgeons. He has therefore been associated with the Association since its very beginnings and has been a most welcome and active member, attending on many occasions and contributing to many of the scientific sessions. He has been a leading pioneer of plastic and reconstructive surgery in his own country and has been particularly active in advancing the treatment of injuries of the hand, burns, and congenital conditions of the face such as cleft lip and palate. He developed his unit in Bergen from small beginnings to become a fully staffed department of the University Hospital providing a service to patients from well to the south of Bergen to the extreme north of the country right up to the Russian border, a distance of nearly 1000 miles as the crow flies. This has been a mammoth undertaking considering the difficulties of communication over this widespread area. In hand surgery he himself pays a special tribute to Sterling Bunnell, whom he visited in 1948. His unit in Bergen is now recognised as the premier department in Norway for surgery of the hand. It also undertakes an extensive teaching commitment for both undergraduate and postgraduates. 'He is a recipient of the Gillies memorial gold medal of the British Association of Plastic Surgeons and is a corresponding member of ten learned societies in Europe. The highest honour of his career came in 1974 when, as a tribute from his countrymen the King of Norway awarded him the Knighthood first class of the Royal Norwegian Order of St Olaf, the highest Norwegian civil honour. 'Mr President, all of us who know Dr Schjelderup are delighted that the Council has recommended his election to the Honorary Fellowship and we are confident that his election can only add to our own stature.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008314
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Stanley, John Knowles (1944 - 2021)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Sian Stanley
Publication Date 2021-05-05 2022-01-18
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009900-E009999
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/384581384581
Occupation Hand surgeon Orthopaedic surgeon
Details John Knowles Stanley was a consultant hand surgeon at Wrightington Hospital, Manchester, where he led the upper limb unit, and a professor of hand surgery at the University of Manchester. He was born in Cardiff on 30 March 1944 the son of Frederick John Stanley and Mary Thelma Stanley née Morgan but grew up in Oswestry in North Wales. From Oswestry Boys’ High School, he moved in 1962 to Liverpool University Medical School, qualifying in 1968. These towns are linked indelibly with Sir Robert Jones, the founder of the modern specialty, so a subsequent career in orthopaedic surgery was highly appropriate. After a first house officer post in Ormskirk, he entered surgical training in the Liverpool region, becoming a senior registrar in orthopaedics in 1974. In 1979 he returned to Ormskirk and District General Hospital as a consultant, with sessions at Wrightington Hospital. Shortly after his appointment, at the age of 35, he had a myocardial infarction resulting in bypass surgery. This was a major factor in his decision in 1984 to move to full-time hand surgery at Wrightington. Under his leadership the unit there grew exponentially, developing a particular focus on the treatment of patients suffering with rheumatoid arthritis as well as other complex problems of the wrist. From 1991, he was joined by more consultant colleagues, creating a renowned centre of innovation and excellence. At his retirement in 2009 the Wrightington upper limb unit had 13 consultants, both orthopaedic and plastic, dealing with all conditions of the upper limb, from shoulder to elbow and hand, with a high national and international reputation. This was a testament to John Stanley’s professional and leadership skills as well as his personal qualities of commitment, passion and drive, combined with pragmatism and perseverance. His many patients, particularly those with long-term rheumatoid disease, enjoyed his communication skills and sense of humour, in addition to his clinical judgement and technical virtuosity, and enquired after him long after his retirement. Although much in demand, he forsook private practice early in his career. He developed in its place a large medico-legal practice, which did not interfere so much with family and social life and his hobbies. Such was the quality and clarity of his opinions, that he was required in the witness box only rarely. John Stanley’s research activities, particularly in the introduction of hand and wrist prostheses, produced more than 100 peer-reviewed papers in learned journals as well as countless presentations to learned societies. He wrote two books, supplied chapters for 20 more and delivered many eponymous lectures. He travelled widely, not only in the UK and Europe, but worldwide, particularly in America, Australia, France and Switzerland, resulting in a long list of honorary fellowships and memberships. In 2016 John was declared a ‘pioneer of hand surgery’ by the International Federation of Societies for Surgery of the Hand, a lasting tribute to a great in the field. A crowning British academic accolade was the award in 1996 of a chair in hand surgery by the University of Manchester, a considerable distinction. He supervised many surgical trainees, a role in which he excelled. Many of these were at the end of their orthopaedic training, acquiring a sub-specialist polish in hand surgery before taking up their own consultant appointments. He continued to teach at Wrightington Hospital until shortly before his death. He also served for many years as an examiner for the Intercollegiate Board in Orthopaedic Surgery. Not surprisingly John Stanley was an active member of the British Society for Surgery of the Hand, presenting at many meetings, serving on council and becoming president in 1999. In 2006 his professional standing and the affection in which he was held by the wider surgical community led to his election to the council of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. His College career culminated in his election as vice president from 2010 to 2012, a role in which he served with distinction and good humour. A marker of his standing in the Council was his appointment as secretary of the council club. When vice president, he was invited to give the Robert Jones lecture at the annual meeting of the British Orthopaedic Association, and the College president at the time exercised his right to attend and chair. The hall was so full that the aisle was packed and the procession behind the mace had difficulty reaching the platform, where a space had to be cleared to allow the lecture to proceed. After his first myocardial infarction his subsequent course was complex in the extreme, with four open cardiac operations and numerous other procedures. It stretches the bounds of credibility that, notwithstanding such problems, he completed a distinguished surgical career and a busy family and social life with his enthusiasm and sense of humour unaffected and survived to the age of 76. He had a lifelong passion for aviation having learnt to fly as an air cadet at school. His heart problems prevented him pursuing this, but he worked as a volunteer in the aeronautical section of the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester. He had a serious interest in military history, particularly but not exclusively of the Second World War, and made many visits to battlefield sites. He managed to take flights in a Spitfire, a Mustang and a Lancaster, fulfilling some of his dreams, particularly when he was allowed to take the controls of the Spitfire and found his piloting skills had not deserted him. He was also loved motor cars, provided they were British and Jaguars. He met his wife Gail Simpson when they were both students at Liverpool University and they married in 1964, before he qualified. She supported John in his surgical practice throughout their married life. but her own career blossomed subsequently as a magistrate, Deputy Lord Lieutenant and High Sheriff of Lancashire. In turn he supported her unfailingly, a role well suited to his unassuming but confident, friendly personality. Not surprisingly both were active in support of the British Heart Foundation. A devoted family man, his marriage produced two children, Sian and James, who both followed their father into medicine. Sian became a general practitioner in Bishop’s Stortford and James followed his father into orthopaedic surgery, in York. John Stanley died suddenly but peacefully at home on 4 February 2021.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009968
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Ghorbal, Murad Muhammed Shafik (1931 - 2019)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Richard Ghorbal
Publication Date 2019-10-22 2020-07-02
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009600-E009699
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/382715382715
Occupation Orthopeadic surgeon Hand surgeon
Details Murad Ghorbal was a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Liverpool’s Walton and Fazakerley hospitals. Born in Masr El Gedida, Egypt on 17 March 1931 to Gertrude Humberstone of Bradford and an Egyptian, Shafik Ghorbal, Murad spent a happy childhood growing up in the Cairo suburb of Heliopolis. His mother was one of the first women to graduate with bachelors and masters degrees in geography from Leeds and Liverpool universities in the 1920s. She became a school teacher in Yorkshire before moving to Egypt to marry. His father became an eminent Egyptian historian and wrote several important works on the rise of the modern Egyptian nation. It would seem that Murad got his love of astronomy and the natural world from his mother and his passion for history from his father. Murad gained his degree in medicine from Ain Shams University, Cairo in August 1956 and worked as a doctor there until moving to England in 1960. After qualifying with part one of his FRCS in London, Murad’s first job in the UK was as a casualty officer at Leicester Royal Infirmary for six months during 1962. There then followed a year of surgical work still in Leicester with the teams of John Leslie and Ernest Reginald Frizelle. It was here he met his future wife, nursing sister Ann Murphy, to whom he was married for over 50 happy years. Following his time in Leicester, Murad worked briefly at the orthopaedic unit at Norwich Hospital, but in order to obtain full registration with the GMC he took the LMSSA from the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries. Part of this qualification required him to work as a junior physician for a time, which he did at Preston Royal Infirmary. It was on completion of the LMSSA that Murad took up his interest in orthopaedics once again, this time under the tutelage of Robert Symon Garden and Norman Arthur Glossop Covell. Murad then moved to Liverpool with his young family in 1970 to undertake his MCh in orthopaedics and the subject of his thesis was ‘Avascular necrosis of the femoral head following traumatic dislocation of the hip’. He became a consultant and ended up staying in Liverpool at Walton and Fazakerley hospitals for the rest of his career. In the early 1970's Murad took a couple of hand surgery placements, one with Athol Parkes in Edinburgh and the other with Jacques Michon in Nancy, France. This would lead to Murad becoming a leading specialist in hand surgery and he would go on to set up the hand surgery unit at Liverpool’s Walton Hospital. Murad went on to become a surgical instructor and, as part of the local MCh course in orthopaedics, he was able to set up a weekend clinical course in hand surgery on Friday afternoons and Saturday mornings with a seemingly endless supply of local patients! At this time, emergency services were based at Walton Hospital and Murad provided emergency orthopaedic cover with a weekly fracture clinic. Elective orthopaedic services were provided at both Walton and Fazakerley, and he would spend a full day operating at both hospitals each week. Amongst his colleagues in Liverpool were Dick Calver, John Metcalfe, Mike Thorneloe and John Redding. Before his retirement, Murad became director of orthopaedics for a time after the creation of the hospital trusts. Murad was an active member of the North West Surgical Hand Society, which met regularly over a nice meal to discuss any problematic cases that were encountered that month. He was also a keen supporter of Bob Owen’s annual orthopaedic outing to scale the many wonderful mountains of north Wales. On a personal level, Murad’s main passion was astronomy and he was a committed and lifelong member (and one time president) of Liverpool Astronomical Society (founded in 1881). He had a particular, though not exclusive, interest in solar observation and he would regularly spend sunny days off in his garden observing the sun through his telescope using a hydrogen alpha filter. Over the years, he produced many meticulous drawings of the sunspots, filaments and prominences that he saw. His interest would take him and his family on many exciting adventures to view total solar eclipses around the world, from India to Indonesia, Kenya to Kazakhstan. Murad was always keen to share his knowledge with others and would often give talks with his wonderful slides on many and varied subjects of interest. Only the month before he died, he gave a lecture on the pyramids of Egypt to his retired medical associates. Murad passed away after a short illness on 16 August 2019 aged 88 and was buried in Allerton Cemetery, Liverpool. He was survived by his beloved wife Ann, two children, Kathryn and Richard, and five grandchildren. Kathryn, a qualified nurse, currently lives and works in the US as a reflexologist and Richard works as an airline pilot and still lives in Liverpool. It is widely accepted by friends and former colleagues that Murad was a kind, gentle and learned man who will be greatly missed.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009661
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Kaplan, Isidore (1927 - 1977)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-01-16
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E006000-E006999/E006600-E006699
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/378821378821
Occupation Hand surgeon Plastic surgeon Plastic and reconstructive surgeon
Details Isidore Kaplan was born in Balfour, Transvaal, on 25 February 1927, and was educated at Jeppe High School, Johannesburg, and at the University of Cape Town, where he graduated MB ChB in 1951. At UCT he captained the Cricket First XI for three successive years and received the Jameson Award for services to sport. At this time too, he was one of the founders of the annual university cricket week. After three years at Addington Hospital in Durban, he proceeded to the United Kingdom, where he worked at Birmingham Accident Hospital and at the Postgraduate Medical School, London. He obtained the FRCS Ed in 1957 and the FRCS in 1958. After a residency in plastic surgery at Edinburgh University, he spent 1960-62 in Pittsburgh, USA, as resident and teaching fellow under Dr William L White. His research there on circumferential burns earned him an honourable mention from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. On returning to South Africa in September 1962, he rapidly built up a very extensive practice as a plastic and reconstructive surgeon. It was in the field of hand surgery that Kaplan became an internationally renowned figure, publishing extensively in the world literature and contributing chapters to several textbooks. He was a prime mover in the formation of the South Africa Society for Surgery of the Hand, of which he became President in 1970. In addition to prominence in the hand surgery and plastic surgery societies of many lands, he was President of the Association of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons of South Africa from 1972 to 1974. In 1967 and 1973, Kaplan was one of the first South African doctors to go to Israel to give freely of his skills in the aftermath of the Arab-Israeli conflicts. As founder of the Israel Hand Society, he enjoyed a particularly high reputation in that country, and subsequently organized the visit of Israeli experts to the conference on military medicine held at UNISA in 1975. In his chosen fields, Kaplan displayed all the hallmarks of a great surgeon, a meticulous attention to detail in history-taking and clinical notation; preparation for and carrying out of an operation that never allowed for short-cuts or lapses from his strict self-imposed discipline, and a superb operative technique. Inside the theatre and out, his relationships with colleagues, nurses and especially his patients were exemplary. Latterly Isidore Kaplan pioneered in South Africa the operation of total submaxillary salivary gland excision and posterior relocation of the parotid ducts. The dramatic conversion of 'drooling' spastic patients with their bibs permanently sodden with saliva to an almost overnight dry state was tremendously rewarding emotionally to all associated with the procedure and this was perhaps the most satisfying achievement of his later career. He was married and had a young family. He died in New York on 25 February 1977 on his fiftieth birthday.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006638
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Sengupta, Ashoke (1931 - 1997)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-12-04
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008900-E008999
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/381100381100
Occupation Hand surgeon Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Ashoke Sengupta was head of the department of surgery at the Institute of Child Health in Calcutta. He was born in Kohima, Nagaland, on 21 June 1931. His father, Jitendra Mohan Sengupta, was a surgeon and had won a gold medal in the DTM&H. His mother was Tarunbala née Majumdar. He was privately educated and passed the intermediate science course from Ashutosh College, before entering the Sri Nilratan Sircar Medical College in Calcutta for his medical training. During his junior posts in the College he was much influenced by Amulyakumar Saha, whom he regarded as his 'guru' and decided him on a career in orthopaedics. In 1957 he went to England to study for the FRCS and worked his way up from senior house surgeon to senior registrar in Ipswich, where he was Cecil Henriques' first registrar. On returning to Calcutta in 1965, he became lecturer and honorary orthopaedic surgeon to the Institute of Child Health, where he soon developed a special expertise in microvascular surgery and the re-implantation of severed digits: in 1968 he performed the first successful re-implantation of a severed palm. He was gradually promoted to honorary consultant in chief and head of the department of surgery, becoming Emeritus Professor in 1996. Sengupta founded, and was the first President of, the Indian Hand Surgery Association. But his interests were wide: he published many papers on the bioengineering of joint replacement, many in association with his wife. Among his many honorary appointments, he was consultant in orthopaedics to the Calcutta Police and the Central Hospital for the South Eastern Railway at Garden Reach, and was consultant to the Employees' State Insurance for West Bengal. He received the gold medal of the *Indian Journal of Surgery* in 1977. In 1986 Stanton University in the USA awarded him a PhD for his work in the field of microvascular surgery. A quiet, friendly and approachable person, he was a popular teacher and an able administrator. His hobbies included writing stories for children, painting, gardening and Indian classical music, in which he was a skilled performer. He married Sipra Sengupta in 1956. She was an engineer with an MSc from both Calcutta and Birmingham Universities, who became his collaborator in studies for the design of total knee replacements. They had one daughter, Aparajita, who took a masters degree in business administration. He died on 5 December 1997 in an aircraft accident whilst returning from a two-week visit to Indonesia to teach postgraduates. World Orthopaedic Concern awarded him posthumously the Arthur Eyre-Book gold medal in 1998.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008917
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Moore, Frederic Thomas (1913 - 1983)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-06-24
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E007000-E007999/E007500-E007599
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/379709379709
Occupation Hand surgeon Plastic surgeon Plastic and reconstructive surgeon
Details Born on 19 October 1913, "Gerry" as he was known to everyone, was a medical student at St Bartholomew's Hospital, qualifying in 1936 and by 1939 he had obtained his Edinburgh Fellowship. After joining the RAF he showed an early interest in burns and especially those involving the hands. In 1944 he was sent to East Grinstead to work with Archibald Mclndoe who had set up a plastic and maxillo-facial unit there for war injuries. Severe face and hand injuries were seen in pilots at that time and under Sir Harold Gillies's guidance he was soon doing pioneer work on the treatment, reconstruction and rehabilitation of these patients. At that time he was the senior medical serving officer at the hospital. He had obtained his "wings" in the RAF and would occasionally pilot a plane to pick up seriously injured casualties. By the end of the war he had been awarded the Légion d'Honneur and was later appointed OBE. In 1945 he obtained his FRCS and joined the honorary staff at both East Grinstead and King's College Hospital; with the introduction of the NHS he became a consultant at both hospitals. Always an independent spirit and no respecter of authority, he carried on some unusual and often successful lines of research. He was a founder member of the Bristol Hand Club and an early member of the British Association of Plastic Surgeons serving as a member of the BAPS Council in 1949. Next to hand surgery he had a special interest in correcting palatal abnormalities associated with speech defects and was associated with the Moor House School of Speech Therapy. In 1957 a former patient of his broke into his house at midnight and threatened to shoot him because he was dissatisfied with the result of Moore's operation on his nose. The surgeon poured them both drinks and, after the man had had several, managed to grab the loaded revolver and telephone the police! He was married to the actress Greta Gynt by whom he had a daughter. He was a keen sailor and a member of the Royal Thames and Monaco Yacht Clubs. He died on 21 June 1983 aged 69 years, survived by his wife and daughter.
Resource Identifier RCS: E007526
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Barron, John Netterville (1911 - 1992)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-09-02
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E007000-E007999/E007800-E007899
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/379995379995
Occupation Hand surgeon Plastic surgeon Plastic and reconstructive surgeon
Details John Barron was born in Napier, New Zealand on 23 December 191 1. He was educated at Wangunui and Otago where he was a rowing blue and a champion skier, and also attained a civil pilot's licence. He qualified in 1937, was house surgeon at Christchurch Hospital, and then went to Britain for surgical training in 1938. He was resident surgical officer at the Royal Masonic Hospital, later becoming first assistant to Rainsford Mowlem at Hill End, St Albans. He obtained the FRCS Edinburgh in 1940. Towards the end of the war at the instigation of Winston Churchill the Foreign Office invited him to go to Yugoslavia to provide surgical services for Marshal Tito and his partisans. Afterwards he set up a 120-bed hospital in Belgrade for reconstructive surgery, also training the staff to man it. In 1946 he returned to England to work with Sir Harold Gillies at Park Prewett, and then as senior lecturer at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, where he researched the blood supply of skin flaps. He was appointed the first Director of the Wessex Regional Plastic and Maxillo-Facial Unit in Odstock in 1949. Soon his travelling and lecturing attracted trainees from all over the world, and established his unit as a national centre. His main interests were reconstructive surgery and surgery of the hand, and he took a close interest in the disabilities which resulted from injuries of the hand and upper limb. Largely as a result of this interest he co-founded the rehabilitation service for workers at Vauxhall Motors, Luton, in 1942. A tragic accident which resulted in the loss of an eye ended his surgical career, but gave him time to finish a three-volume textbook on plastic surgery, *Operative, plastic and reconstructive surgery* (1980). His services in Yugoslavia were rewarded by Tito with the Yugoslav Flag with Golden Wreath in 1975, followed by the inauguration of the Barron Institute for Plastic Surgery at the University of Ljublana in 1976. He received the Honorary FRCS in 1975 and the Honorary MS of the University of Southampton in 1976. He was three times President of the British Association of Plastic Surgery and was also President of the British Society for Surgery of the Hand. He was a keen gardener, *cordon bleu* cook, cabinet-maker and wine-maker. He died at the age of 80, predeceased by his wife Joan, and survived by their son and two daughters.
Resource Identifier RCS: E007812
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Bruner, Julian Minassian (1900 - 1997)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-10-22
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008400-E008499
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380665380665
Occupation General surgeon Hand surgeon
Details Julian Bruner was a founder member and past President of the American Society for Surgery of the Hand. He was born in Des Moines, Iowa, on 4 December 1900. His father, Harootune Avedis Minassian, came from Turkey, qualified at the Central Turkey College in 1886, and later studied at Bellevue Hospital Medical College, New York, where he graduated MD for a second time. His mother was Jessie Bruner, daughter of the Reverend Francis Marion Bruner. He took his mother's maiden name in 1918. He was educated in the public schools of Des Moines and then entered the University of Chicago in 1922, graduating MD from the Rush Medical College in 1927. From Rush, he went to the Mayo Clinic as a fellow and resident for three years. It was there that he heard that the College was, for the first time, going to offer the primary examination in Toronto in August 1929. Together with an Australian fellow resident, he studied for the primary, doing dissections under the direction of James Learmonth, who was then a Rockefeller fellow and a member of the neuro-surgical staff at the Mayo Clinic. During this time, he also became a friend of Archie McIndoe, also a visiting fellow. He was one of the successful nine out of 23 candidates. After completing his residency, he applied to the College to sit the final FRCS and Lord Moynihan ruled that he was eligible to sit the examination. So he and his new bride went to London in 1932, enrolled along with McIndoe in the Bart's refresher course, but failed. He did a two-month tour of the Continent and another refresher course at St Thomas's, but failed again in November 1932. So he returned to join his father in private practice in Des Moines. During the second world war, he worked as a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army Medical Corps under Sterling Bunnell in the William Beaumont General Hospital, El Paso, Texas, which treated more than 2,000 cases of hand injury from all over the world. In 1946, at Bunnell's suggestion, he joined other young surgeons to set up the American Society for Surgery of the Hand, of which he became President in 1959. In 1950, he visited England, as the guest of McIndoe at East Grinstead and Learmonth, now Regius Professor of Surgery in Edinburgh. In 1961, he joined a group of British surgeons who were later to become the British Society for Surgery of the Hand, whose meetings he attended regularly for the next decade. He was invited to give the McIndoe lecture at the College in 1972 and was made FRCS *ad eundem* in 1973. He was a member of the appeal committee of the Royal College of Surgeons Foundation. He married in 1932, Winifred Mary née Burns, by whom he had one son and two daughters, none of whom became doctors. He died on 20 June 1997.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008482
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Ratcliffe, Robert James (1957 - 2000)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-12-02
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008800-E008899
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/381047381047
Occupation Hand surgeon Plastic surgeon Plastic and reconstructive surgeon
Details Bob Ratcliffe was a consultant in plastic, hand and reconstructive surgery at Canniesburn Hospital, Glasgow. He was born on 15 June 1957 at St Helens, Lancashire, the son of Robert Ernest Ratcliffe, an electrician, and Jean Elizabeth née Worrall. As a child he was interested in mechanical objects, was extremely patient and had enviable manual dexterity, skills he would use in his later life. He went to Cowley Boys Grammar School, St Helens, where he gained the school physics prize, and the University of Manchester, where he took an honours BSc in anatomy, and gained honours in anatomy, pharmacology, pathology and surgery in the MB. He was a keen sportsman, enjoying rugby, skiing and hill-walking. After graduating in 1981, he was a house physician at the University of South Manchester Hospital, and house surgeon at the Manchester Royal Infirmary. He then demonstrated anatomy under P F Harris while he studied for the primary. He did junior surgical posts at Manchester and at the Christie Hospital, where he became interested in reconstructive surgery after treatment for cancer. He was appointed registrar in general surgery in Manchester after passing his FRCS, and then specialised in plastic surgery at the Welsh Regional Centre for Plastic and Burns Surgery and Maxillofacial Surgery at Chepstow, where he became interested in hand surgery under Phil Sykes. He returned to Manchester as a senior house officer in plastic surgery in March 1988 at the Regional Centre for Plastic Surgery at Booth Hall Hospital, where he was influenced by Peter Craig. In November 1988 he was appointed registrar in plastic surgery at the West of Scotland Regional Plastic and Maxillofacial Surgery Unit, Canniesburn Hospital, Glasgow, and two years later was appointed to the plastic surgery and jaw injury service at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Aylesbury. He joined the consultant staff at Canniesburn in 1993 as a consultant plastic surgeon with a special interest in hand surgery. Despite an ever increasingly clinical workload, he was also actively involved in administration and management. He was a member of the specialty board in plastic surgery for the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and had been acting clinical director for the West of Scotland Regional Plastic Surgery Service. He was actively involved in setting up a plastic surgical service in Ghana, spending his leave working there to build up the unit and train the staff. In 1984 he married Karen Margaret Anne Todd, a nurse. They had two daughters, Katie and Hannah, and a son, Nicholas. He died while out hill-walking in Scotland, on 19 February 2000. A Robert J Ratcliffe fellowship has been established to assist trainees in plastic surgery.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008864
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Wadsworth, Thomas Gordon (1930 - 2002)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-12-08
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008900-E008999
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/381163381163
Occupation Hand surgeon Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Tom Wadsworth was one of the leading orthopaedic surgeons of his generation. He was born on 13 January 1930 in Liverpool, the son of Samuel Bertram Wadsworth and Elizabeth Brown. He was the youngest of four children and, being 14 years junior to the rest, had relatively old parents. His birth was difficult, his mother nearly dying of septicaemia. Thus, even at this early age, he was beginning to demonstrate that he was capable of being awkward. His mother received one of the first treatments of prontosil, survived, and lived to be nearly 100. His uncle Tom and brother George were physicians in Liverpool. Tom entered Liverpool University Medical School as a dental student. Nevertheless, by the end of his first year, he calculated that medicine was likely to be more profitable in the long term, and switched courses. After qualifying, he began to train as a cardiologist, but altered course to orthopaedics, because, it is said, of the influence of his grandfather, who had to have a leg amputated after an industrial accident. Tom became orthopaedic registrar at the Infirmary under Henry O'Mally, and set about obtaining Fellowships of the Royal Colleges of Surgeons of both England and Edinburgh, and a masters degree in orthopaedic surgery from the University of Liverpool. He was appointed as an orthopaedic surgeon at St Leonard's Hospital in the East End, and was appointed to the Hackney Hospital in 1966, joining the staff of St Bartholomew's Hospital after the creation of the City and Hackney Health District. Having trained with Al Swanson in the USA, he specialised in hand surgery, where he made substantial contributions. He developed various prosthetic devices, including a bi-cortical screw fixation for the olecranon and popularised the posterolateral approach to the elbow joint using a triceps tendon release technique. His early studies on the chromosomal abnormalities that are linked with the carrying angle of the elbow joint led to later research on the cubital tunnel syndrome and the resultant compression neuropathy of the ulnar nerve. As well as papers on these and other areas of interest, he wrote several chapters for textbooks, and in 1982 produced the first edition of his classic treatise *The elbow* which was published by Churchill Livingstone. At the time of his death he was preparing the second edition of his textbook, together with a companion surgical atlas. In his later years, as his diabetic retinopathy progressed, he expanded his medico-legal practice and in 1994 gained a legal qualification to support these activities. Until his sight deteriorated, he had been an avid reader of detective novels and spoke of writing one himself, claiming that he would have no difficulty in creating characters for the plot based on professional colleagues, some of whom were capable of the crimes and others he would gladly write up as the victims. He had been briefly married. He died on 8 February 2002.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008980
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Robins, Robert Henry Cradock (1923 - 2015)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Sir Barry Jackson
Publication Date 2015-03-13 2015-09-14
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E006000-E006999/E006900-E006999
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/379138379138
Occupation Hand surgeon Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Robert Robins, known as 'Robbie' to his family and friends, was an orthopaedic surgeon noted for his role in the development of hand surgery, a *bon viveur* and a well-known figure in Cornish society. He was born on 7 August 1923 to Ethel May Robins née Greenwood and Hugh Canning Cradock Robins, a bank manager, in High Wycombe. Robins attended Aldenham School, where he was a scholar, before proceeding to Queens' College, Cambridge, to read medicine. It was said that he chose medicine as a career as a consequence of his older brother having polio and the many hospital visits that he made as a child. His clinical training was at St Bartholomew's Hospital, qualifying in 1947, before becoming house surgeon to Clifford Naunton Morgan and Edward Tuckwell. After house jobs he was called up for National Service and spent time as a ship's doctor in the merchant navy. In his early training he worked at Bath as a senior house officer and subsequently in Newcastle, where he was the recipient of a Luccock medical research fellowship studying aspects of hand surgery, which then was no more than a relatively minor branch of orthopaedics. This research led in 1952 to the inaugural award of the Sir James Berry prize by the Royal College of Surgeons for his dissertation titled 'The treatment and preservation of the injured hand'. It also led in 1954 to a Hunterian Lecture on the same subject. He then moved to Oxford as a registrar and then to the Princess Elizabeth Orthopaedic Hospital, Exeter, as a senior registrar, where he was greatly influenced by Norman Capener. During his time in Exeter he was a Council of Europe travelling fellow to Sweden and France and, in 1960, a British Orthopaedic Association travelling fellow to North America. In 1961 he was appointed as a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro, where he continued his special interest in hand surgery. In the same year he published a monograph *Injuries and infections of the hand* (London, Edward Arnold). In 1956, Robins was one of five founder members of the Second Hand Club, a group of young enthusiasts who were keen to promote the development of hand surgery as a specialty. A few years earlier, in 1952, the Hand Club had been founded by 12 senior surgeons who wished to keep it exclusive to the original members, sufficiently small for a Friday evening dinner at the Athenaeum Club in London, followed by a short scientific meeting on the Saturday morning. This was called by some 'a dining club with hand surgery as gossip'. The young upstarts of the new society, however, envisaged a much broader organisation with countrywide membership and its own journal, the *Proceedings of the Second Hand Club*. This publication later became the *Journal of Hand Surgery*, of which Robins was chairman of the editorial board for 10 years. The two clubs merged in 1964 and four years later became the British Society for Surgery of the Hand, Robins being president in 1979. Throughout his consultant appointment Robins practiced the entire range of orthopaedic surgery, being one of only three orthopaedic surgeons on the staff, but continued his close interest in hand surgery, publishing several articles and chapters in textbooks on this subject. He maintained a close involvement with the hand surgery fraternity and was twice a British Council fellow promoting the developing specialty, travelling to Czechoslovakia in 1975 and Hungary in 1979. Despite a very busy clinical practice he found time to be a member of the Cornwall Area Heath Authority, become an examiner for the Edinburgh college FRCS and serve on various committees both locally in Cornwall and at the English college. He retired from the NHS in 1988 aged 65. In 2001 he was recognised internationally by the designation 'pioneer of hand surgery' by the International Federation of Societies for Surgery of the Hand. Robert Robins had a rich life outside of surgery. He enjoyed travel, especially to his beloved France, where he once owned two houses simultaneously. He was a keen landscape gardener, an able fisherman and an enthusiastic sailor, although his expertise in seafaring was uncertain. On one occasion in somewhat rough weather the engine of his boat *Sea Urchin* gave out, the halyard of the main sail broke and the anchor was found unserviceable, so that the craft was at the mercy of the waves. Fortunately an emergency flare summoned the local lifeboat and a rescue was effected by the crew, one of whom was a former patient. The incident was inevitably blazoned in the local newspaper a few days later, much to his considerable embarrassment. Although never a proficient sportsman, he was a keen follower of rugby and cricket, being a member of the MCC for many years. Other interests were art and architecture, folk music and a regular Thursday evening spent Morris dancing - he claimed that this was better exercise and less dangerous than sport! He became a pillar of Cornish society, becoming a close friend of many well known artists of the Truro school, local intellectuals, authors and owners of houses with large gardens. He seemed to know everyone who was anyone in Cornwall; at his service of thanksgiving he was described as being the consummate networker. A devoted family man, in 1953 he married Shirley, a physiotherapist whom he met when working in Exeter. They had four children, a daughter, Elizabeth, and three sons, Michael, James and Nicholas. He died of metastatic carcinoma of the prostate on 23 February 2015 aged 91.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006955
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Stack, Hugh Graham (1915 - 1992)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-10-02
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008300-E008399
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380522380522
Occupation Hand surgeon Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Hugh Graham Stack was born in Bristol on 7 December 1915, the third son of Edward H E Stack FRCS (*Lives of the Fellows* 2, 340), ophthalmic surgeon to the Bristol Royal Infirmary, and his wife Caroline, née Kennedy. His early education was at Clifton College and whilst there he was awarded the H H Wills scholarship to study chemistry at Bristol University. After three years he changed direction and entered St Bartholomew's Hospital as a medical student, qualifying in 1942. His early appointments were as house surgeon to Addenbrooke's Hospital, the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital and the Miller General Hospital, Greenwich. He joined the RNVR from 1945 to 1947 and after demobilisation served as honorary demonstrator in anatomy at King's College, Strand, and later as surgical registrar at the North Middlesex Hospital. He passed the FRCS in 1951 and then decided to pursue a career in orthopaedic surgery. He was appointed senior registrar at the Miller Hospital and chief assistant to the orthopaedic department of St Bartholomew's Hospital. During this time he developed an interest in reconstructive surgery of the hand and came under the influence of Jackson Burrows, Osmond Clark, Norman Capener and Guy Pulvertaft. In 1956 he was appointed consultant surgeon at the Albert Dock Orthopaedic and Fracture Hospital and subsequently secured appointments at Harold Wood and Brentwood District Hospitals. He later became honorary consultant in hand surgery at the regional plastic surgery centre in St Andrew's Hospital, Billericay. His interest in hand surgery continued and he carried out research into the anatomy and function of the intrinsic muscles, which was presented at an Arris and Gale Lecture in 1962 entitled *Muscle function in the fingers*. He was awarded a gold medal by the British Medical Association in 1963 for his film on the same subject and in 1970 was elected Hunterian Professor. His lecture was entitled *The palmar fascia* and described the applied anatomy of Dupuytren's contracture. Shortly before his consultant appointment the Hand Club of Great Britain had decided to pursue a policy of closed membership, and a group of younger surgeons with similar interests formed a society named the Second Hand Club. Graham Stack was made secretary of the new society and made detailed records of its bi-annual meetings, issuing a bulletin to all members. In 1965 he played an important rôle in the merger of the two clubs into the British Club for Surgery of the Hand, of which he was President in 1973. He continued to contribute to orthopaedic publications and was co-editor of *The hand* which later became linked with the *Journal of hand surgery - American volume*. He was a liveryman of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries which he joined in 1967, and regularly attended its meetings. He retired from practice in 1980 and moved home to Salisbury. He married Lorna Cooke MB, MRCP in 1955, having met her while working as a senior registrar at the Central Middlesex Hospital. There was one daughter, Caroline, and one son, Charles, who became a consultant anaesthetist. His outside interests were fly-fishing, wood carving (he made the gavel which is still used in committee meetings), field botany and gardening, all of which he was able to pursue in Salisbury. He died on 28 May 1992 aged 77, survived by his wife and family.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008339
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Watson, Neil Alexander (1944 - 2009)

2024-05-02T18:14:26Z

by David K C Cooper
Publication Date 2012-01-23 2013-09-06
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001800-E001899
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/374066374066
Occupation Artist Hand surgeon Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Neil Watson was a hand surgeon in Oxford and Milton Keynes, and later a successful artist. He was born on 13 February 1944 at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford. Neil's father, John Stuart Ferra Watson, and paternal grandfather were both Guy's-trained doctors. As his father served in the Royal Army Medical Corps, Neil's parents were overseas for most of his childhood, and, after the age of five, he saw them during only one school holiday each year. The other holidays he would spend with his grandparents or with various great aunts in the UK. With the help of a British Army bursary, Neil was educated at St Edward's School in Oxford, which proved 'a marvellous experience' for him. Although he already had an interest in the arts, probably inherited from his 'extremely creative' mother Rosemary (née Underhill), St Edward's exposed him to art and music on a greater scale. He played the violin in the school orchestra and greatly enjoyed the chapel organ and choir. He described these formative years 'as if I was in paradise'. He also developed a love of rowing but, because of the extremely high standard at the school at the time, he had to be content with being a member of the second or third VIII. He originally planned a career in architecture but, through the influence of a biology teacher, he finally chose medicine. Although offered a place at St John's College, Cambridge, he chose to go straight to Guy's, a decision he later regretted as he 'missed out on the Cambridge experience'. First, however, he spent several months in Florence and Rome, developing his drawing and painting, and learning Italian. In 1962, Neil entered Guy's Hospital Medical School, and found the next five years 'immensely exciting'. Rowing became very important to him and, in the summer of 1963, he represented the boat club at Henley Royal Regatta. He was also an active member of the arts club and the theatre club, for which he designed sets. He bought 'beer and petrol' and even 'a fiercely fast car' by selling etchings and paintings. One of his pen and ink drawings of the hospital featured on the cover of *Guy's Hospital Gazette*. In his clinical years, he was greatly influenced by the senior orthopaedic surgeon, Tim Stamm, who he described as 'an absolutely phenomenal surgeon'. After graduating in 1967, he was appointed orthopaedic house surgeon at Guy's, during which period he married, and followed this by a series of house appointments in Truro in Cornwall. He then returned to Guy's on the junior surgical registrar rotation (when Sir Hedley Atkins was handing over to Lord McColl as professor of surgery). He found working with the urologists, F R Kilpatrick and Hugh Kinder, and the neurosurgeon, Murray Falconer (at the Maudsley), especially valuable. After two years as a registrar in Guildford (becoming an FRCS in 1971), he was appointed orthopaedic registrar at Oxford under Robert Duthie, one of the most influential orthopaedic surgeons in the UK. In 1977, a travelling fellowship from the Worshipful Company of Scientific Instrument Makers enabled him to spend time with several innovative hand and plastic surgeons in Melbourne, Australia, where he learned microsurgery and wrote several research papers. He returned to Oxford as a senior registrar. His first consultant position was a joint appointment between the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre and Banbury, where he acquired an operating microscope, and started carrying out peripheral nerve surgery and teaching microsurgery courses. Unfortunately, at Oxford, Duthie was of the opinion that 'we're all generalists here', and Neil's efforts to expand his work in nerve surgery met with resistance. Sadly, during this period, his marriage broke up, but he was able to maintain a close relationship with his three children. When the post of clinical reader in orthopaedics at Oxford became vacant, he was appointed and also elected to a fellowship at Green College. He specialised in surgery for rheumatoid arthritis, which he found particularly rewarding, but he was disappointed that his planned research projects were not fully achieved. After two or three years, a new hospital opened in Milton Keynes, and the opportunity of developing a new type of consultant-led service was so appealing that he accepted a position there and began to specialise in hand surgery. During these years at Oxford and Milton Keynes, he wrote about 50 scientific communications and three books on hand surgery. As a registrar, he had written *Practical management of musculo-skeletal emergencies* (Oxford, Blackwell Scientific, 1985), and as a consultant, *Hand injuries and infections* (London, Gower Medical, 1986). He then co-edited *Methods and concepts in hand surgery* (London, Butterworths, 1986). At a surgical conference, he met an American woman who ran a hand and rehabilitation centre in North Carolina. Neil soon made the momentous decision to relocate to the US, with the intention of obtaining a license to practise hand surgery there. However, the medical board of North Carolina made it so difficult for him that he made the even more momentous decision to abandon his surgical career and revert to his first love, drawing and painting. Even though he was thereafter relatively financially insecure, he never regretted the decision to begin his new career as a 'creative person'. For the next 20 or more years he painted, taught workshops in drawing and painting, and made several CDs of his own improvisational music. These endeavours went well, and he found he was earning $45,000 to $50,000 a year selling paintings in galleries. The highlight of his artistic career was when he held an exhibition of his work, 'Architecture observed', in Venice in 1996. For three months he exhibited 135 of his works, which were viewed by almost 10,000 people. One visitor was a Venetian writer, Renato Pestriniero, and together they published a book of Neil's paintings with commentaries by Pestriniero, *Seeking Venice* (Vianello Libri, 2001), which became available in Italian, French and English. Neil also found time to learn to fly, partly by using simulation, which gave him the idea of developing a simulator for microsurgical techniques. He received a grant of $250,000 from the US National Institutes of Health, with which he developed realistic layered replications of the rat femoral artery, vein and sciatic nerve. He became co-director of the Microsurgical Training Institute in Santa Barbara, California, where surgeons came from all over the world. When his second marriage was dissolved, he decided to move to the San Francisco bay area, where he continued painting and, for periods, was more active in teaching and in writing about art. He taught intermittently at Cal Poly and at the Academy of Art College in San Francisco (now the Academy of Art University). His painting evolved from being realistic and conventional to more abstract, eventually combining images with the written word, a form of art he termed 'diagraphica'. He brought out several CDs, including *The drawing spirit: developing the art of your drawing hand* (2003) and *Trigraphica: a drawing trilogy* (2007?), and a book *Drawing - developing a lively and expressive approach* (Neil Watson, 2007). He also rekindled his early interest in music. In late 2008 he became engaged again, but the development of a brain tumour curtailed this plan and, having returned to Oxford to be near two of his children, he died there on 4 October 2009 at the age of 65. He was survived by his three children, Ben, Anita and Hugh, and his two former wives.
Resource Identifier RCS: E001883
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset