Harold Ellis

Harold Ellis, CBE, MCh, FRCS (born Henry Ellis; 13 January 1926 – 25 March 2026) was an English surgeon. He was a professor of surgery at the University of London and professor in the Department of Anatomy and Human Sciences at the King's College London School of Medicine.

Ellis 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.

Early life and education Harold Ellis was born as Henry Ellis in Stepney Green on 13 January 1926, the youngest of four children to dress makers. He completed his early education from St Olave's Grammar School before gaining admission to study medicine at Oxford University Medical School. He subsequently took up a post at the Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford before completing national service from 1950 to 1951 as a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps. During his military service, he was responsible for the care of servicemen returning from the Korean War with severe spinal and cranial injuries. and as the author of the definitive student textbook Clinical Anatomy, now in its fourteenth edition.

Death Ellis turned 100 on 13 January 2026, and died on 25 March. He was a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, and was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1987 New Year Honours.

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

Selected publications Ellis, Harold and Mahadevan, Vishy (2019). Clinical Anatomy: Applied Anatomy for Students and Junior Doctors (Fourteenth edition). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. . Ellis, Harold and Abdalla, Sala (2019). A History of Surgery (Third Edition). CRC Press. . Ellis, Harold (2019). Operations that Made History. CRC Press. . Ellis, Harold, Sir Roy Calne and Watson, Christopher (2006). Lecture notes on general surgery (Eleventh edition). Oxford: Blackwell Scientific. . Ellis, Harold (2009). Cambridge Illustrated History of Surgery (Second edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . Kinirons, Mark and Ellis, Harold (2011). French's Index of Differential Diagnosis: An A-Z (Fifteenth edition). Hodder Arnold. . Ellis, Harold, Logan, Bari and Dixon, Adrian (2009). Human Sectional Anatomy: Pocket Atlas of Body Sections, CT and MRI Images (Third edition). Hodder Arnold. . Ellis, Harold and Watson, Christopher (2001). Pocket Diagnosis in General Surgery (Third edition). Wiley-Blackwell. . Ellis, Harold, Feldman, Stanley and Harrop-Griffiths, William (2003). Anatomy for Anaesthetists (Eighth edition). Wiley-Blackwell. .