Harold Ellis (surgeon)

Professor Harold Ellis CBE, Mch, FRCS (born 13 January 1926) is an English retired surgeon. He was Emeritus Professor of Surgery in the University of London and most recently a professor in the Department of Anatomy & Human Sciences at the King's College London School of Medicine. He qualified as a doctor from the University of Oxford in July 1948, the same month the National Health Service began. From 1950 to 1951 he undertook national service as a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps, afterwards continuing his training as a surgical registrar in London, Sheffield and Oxford before taking up a post as senior lecturer in the University of London. In 1962, he took up the foundation chair of surgery at the Westminster Hospital, a post which he held until his retirement from practice in 1989. After a stint teaching anatomy in the University of Cambridge, he took up his present position in 1993.

Ellis is one of the most notable British surgeons of the past fifty years, renowned both for his inspirational teaching and as the author of the definitive student textbook Clinical Anatomy, now in its fourteenth edition. He held positions as a vice-president of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and of the Royal Society of Medicine and was president of the British Association of Surgical Oncology. In 1986 he delivered the Bradshaw Lecture on the subject of breast cancer.

The Professor Harold Ellis Medical Student Prize For Surgery is named after him, and has been awarded by the Royal College of Surgeons since 2007. The International Journal of Surgery has awarded the Harold Ellis Prize in Surgery annually since 2003.