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Dr Akira Nagano was born on December 1, 1943, and grew up in Ehime, which is one of the four main islands of Japan. After graduating from Tokyo University, he chose orthopaedic surgery as his profession, where he met his mentor Dr Naoichi Tsuyama, and devoted his life to the field of peripheral nerve surgery. After many years of practice at Tokyo University as an associate professor, Dr Nagano became a professor at Hamamatsu University School of Medicine in 1998. During his 11-year term, he organised and chaired many annual meetings, including the Annual Research Meeting of the Japanese Orthopaedic Association, Japanese Society for Surgery of Hand, Japan Elbow Society, and Japanese Peripheral Nerve Society. Until his retirement in 2009, Dr Nagano was a pioneer in the field of hand, elbow, and, of course, peripheral nerve surgery. Undoubtedly, Dr Nagano’s leading work is the introduction of nerve transfer for the treatment of brachial plexus avulsion injury. With Dr Tsuyama and Dr Testuya Hara, Dr Nagano created hope for the most devastating peripheral nerve injury. Their idea was to directly transfer intercostal nerve to either the musculocutaneous nerve, radial nerve, or median nerve. By doing so, they regained more than grade 3 or 4 elbow flexion power in over 80% of the patients younger than 40 years. This unprecedented result was revolutionary and led other surgeons to focus on brachial plexus treatment. Dr Nagano also applied intercostal nerve transfer in the restoration of elbow function for obstetrical paralysis with co-contraction of the biceps and the triceps, which enabled children to regain smooth elbow and …