David Barton was born in Adelaide on 20 January 1933, the son of Arthur Augustus Barton, a bank manager and his wife, Ellen. He was at school at Riverton and was awarded the Prince Alfred College Grasby Scholarship before entering the University of Adelaide where he graduated in medicine in 1955. His surgical training continued in Fremantle and Adelaide but also included senior registrar posts in England at Dartford and Blackpool. In 1968 he was appointed as an honorary surgeon to the Warrnambool Hospital in Victoria, Australia. Moving to the outback he became a rural GP in West Wyalong, New South Wales. He continued in general practice and also took up an appointment as visiting surgeon to the Hutchinson Hospital, Gawler in New South Wales. For seven years, before retirement in 1988, he ran a private practice in Christics Beach, South Australia. In 1962 he married Jean McGonnell Halley, a medical scientist, and they had a son James who became an aeronautical engineer with a degree in engineering and a daughter Catriona who became a public relations officer after taking her BA. David Barton was a keen tennis player. He enjoyed reading and stamp collecting (especially first day covers). It was said that he regularly won prizes for correctly diagnosing medical problems in the journal *Update*. He died on 24 March 1989.