David Hugh Nixseaman was a consultant ophthalmic surgeon in Ayrshire and Galloway. He was born in Norwich, Norfolk on 16 December 1924. His father, Alfred Jonathan Seaman, was a chaplain to HM Forces in India; his mother was Edith Minna Seaman née Nix-James, a teacher and the daughter of an engraver in the East India Company who was later involved in aircraft production. The family chose to change their surname to Nixseaman. Nixseaman was educated at Eversley School in Southwold, Suffolk, Marlborough College and then Selwyn College, Cambridge, which he initially entered with an exhibition in classics. He was taught by the Nobel prize-winning physiologist Lord Edgar Adrian and the zoologist Lancelot Alexander Borradaile, and passed the natural sciences tripos with honours in 1946. He went on to St George’s Hospital Medical School in London for his clinical studies on an entrance scholarship in anatomy and physiology. He passed the MRCS LRCP in 1949 and the MB BChir in 1950. He was a paediatric house surgeon at St George’s and then a medical house surgeon at Ipswich General Hospital. From 1950 to 1952 he carried out his National Service with the British Army of the Rhine, as a captain in the RAMC. After his return to civilian life, he was an orthopaedic house surgeon at Wingfield-Morris Hospital in Oxford, a casualty officer back at St George’s Hospital, and a general senior house officer in Coventry and Bristol. From December 1955 he spent two years as a surgical registrar at Whipps Cross Hospital in London, gaining his FRCS in 1957. He then began his specialty training in ophthalmic surgery. He was an ophthalmic senior house officer at the Ophthalmic and Aural Hospital, Maidstone and then an ophthalmic registrar at St Thomas’ Hospital, London. From February 1960 to October 1962 he was an ophthalmic registrar for the Central Middlesex Group. In December 1961 he moved to Scotland, to the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, where he was an ophthalmic senior registrar. In May 1964 he was appointed to the Ayrshire and Galloway Ophthalmic Unit as a consultant. He retired in May 1987. He enjoyed music; he played in the London Hospitals and the Ayrshire Symphony orchestras. He also painted and exhibited with the Medical Art Society. In November 1956 he married Elizabeth Marion France, a consultant anaesthetist. They had two children – Helen Mary and Andrew Peter. Predeceased by his wife in 1995, David Hugh Nixseaman died on 2 March 2009 at the age of 84.