Alan Apley was born in London in 1914, the youngest son of Polish Jewish immigrants.
After completing his training, he became a consultant at the Rowley Bristow Orthopaedic Hospital, Pyrford, where he started his FRCS course in 1948.
[2] Notes from this course were turned into a textbook, Apley's System of Orthopaedics and Fractures, which was first published in 1959,[2] and is now in its ninth edition.
[3] He designed the first purpose-built emergency department in the south of England at St Peter's Hospital, Chertsey.
He became director of orthopaedics at St Thomas' Hospital in 1972,[4] and was elected to the council of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1973.