David Sonnabend AM is Professor Emeritus at the University of Sydney, where he was Professor of Orthopaedic and Traumatic Surgery from 2001 until 2016. He has an honours degree in biochemistry and graduated in Medicine in 1972. His clinical interests relate to shoulder surgery and arthritis, and he has published over 70 peer-reviewed scientific papers and 18 book chapters in this field. His doctoral thesis was on the pathology, repair and comparative anatomy of the rotator cuff.
He was a founding member of the Australian and New Zealand Orthopaedic Research Society, and the inaugural president of the Shoulder and Elbow Society of Australia, of which he is an honorary life member. He was, for nine years, “Editor in Australasia” of the Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery. In 1998 he was chairman of the 7th International Congress of Surgery of the Shoulder. He is a corresponding member of the “American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons”, and a reviewer for various journals (including the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, the Journal of Orthopaedic Science, the American Journal of Sports Medicine, the Journal of Shoulder & Elbow Surgery and Shoulder & Elbow Journal). He was for sixteen years a member of the International Board of Shoulder Surgery, and for eight years a member of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons ‘Court of Examiners’. He has been a visiting professor at various overseas universities, including George Washington University (Washington DC, USA), the Hebrew University (Jerusalem, Israel) and the University of Calgary (Calgary, Alberta, Canada). He has been an invited guest lecturer at numerous overseas meetings including the Japanese, New Zealand, Indonesian and South African Orthopaedic Associations and the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. In 2004 he was the keynote lecturer at the 9th International Conference on Surgery of the Shoulder, in Washington DC. In 2007 he received the Australian Orthopaedic Association award for contributions to Orthopaedic Research, and in 2011 the Australian Orthopaedic Association award for orthopaedic education. In 2013 he received the L.O. Betts Medal for outstanding contribution to Australian Orthopaedics. In 2016 he was made a Fellow of the Australian Orthopaedic Association Research Foundation. He was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in 2018
He participates in a post specialization Fellowship programme in Shoulder and Elbow Surgery at the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney and is involved in ongoing research into osteoarthritis and tendon healing in the Raymond Purves Research Laboratories (Royal North Shore Hospital), as well as various other clinical research projects.
