Sir Harold Delf Gillies (June 17, 1882 - September 10, 1960) was a New Zealand surgeon who is considered to be the father of plastic surgery.
Gillies was born in Dunedin, New Zealand. He studied medicine at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge University.
Gillies married Kathleen Margaret Jackson on the November 9, 1911, in London.
Following the outbreak of World War I he joined the Royal Army Medical Crops. While treating patients who had been injured during the war, Gillies developed many of the techniques for plastic surgery.
During World War II Gillies acted as a consultant to the Ministry of Health, the RAF and the Admiralty. He organised plastic surgery units in various parts of Britain. As well as training doctors from Commonwealth nations in plastic surgery.
In 1945, he and a colleague carried out the world's first sex change of a woman into a man.
