Barbara Ansell was a pioneering paediatric rheumatologist. She was born in Warwick on 30 August 1923 and studied medicine at Birmingham University. At first she wanted to be a cardiologist but developed an interest in rheumatology when she was appointed to the Canadian Red Cross Memorial Hospital in Taplow, where Eric Bywaters asked her to study the heart disease of rheumatic fever. She quickly became more interested in the arthritic aspects of this disease, identified the different types of arthritis and connective diseases which occurred in childhood, and showed that they were different pathologically and genetically to those which occurred in adults. In 1962 she was appointed to a post jointly funded by the NHS and the MRC, and held this until she retired in 1988. While at first the most severely ill children with arthritis were referred to her, she recognised this was impracticable, and set up regional paediatric rheumatology clinics across the UK, which she would visit at weekends to consult and support the local rheumatologists. She was a large lady, enormously generous, with an unbelievable memory for patients' details, a wonderful cook and a great friend. Her husband, Angus Watson, a general practitioner, predeceased her. She died from ovarian cancer on 14 September 2001.