Donald James Wurth was a senior surgeon at Sutherland District Hospital in Sydney, New South Wales. Born in Sydney on 1 January 1921, he was the eldest of the two sons of Wallace James Wurth LLD and his wife Phyllis Bertha née Cavill. His brother qualified as an anaesthetist. Their father was chancellor of the University of New South Wales and chairman of the New South Wales public service board. The second medical school to be opened in the state was called the Wallace Wurth School of Medicine in his honour. After attending Sydney Boys High School, Donald studied medicine at Sydney University and Sydney Hospital (where he was mentored by Howard Bullock) qualifying MB BS in 1943. From 1944 to 1947 he served as a captain with the Australian Imperial Forces in the Pacific region. After the war he travelled to the UK and worked with Hugh Alan Dugleby Small at various London hospitals, passing the college fellowship in 1949. On his return to Australia he became a clinical lecturer in surgery at the University of New South Wales and honorary surgeon to the Prince Henry and Princess of Wales Hospitals, the Royal Hospital for Women and the Sutherland District Hospital. He married Ivy Field, a Londoner, in 1950 and they had four sons one of whom took up medicine. All his life he was a keen tennis player. He died on 31 March 2004 aged 83.