Born 8 November 1867 at 15 Sheffield Gardens, Kensington, the eldest surviving son of Alfred Pizzey Newton and Jessie Wylie, his wife. His father (1830-83) was a well-known landscape painter, of whom there is an account with a portrait in *The Illustrated London News*, 27 October 1883, p. 405. The artist was an Essex man by birth, but came of Italian stock on his mother's side. Two of his sons died as children. Robert Earle Newton was delicate as a boy, was educated privately and was sent to Switzerland at the age of 17, where he soon became proficient in French, Spanish, and Italian. Returning to England he entered the Victoria University and from there proceeded to Glasgow, where he graduated in medicine with high commendation. He served as resident assistant to the professors of medicine and surgery and to the lecturer on gynaecology, and was demonstrator of pathology before coming to London, where he took a postgraduate course of surgery at. St Bartholomew's Hospital. An attack of pleurisy warned him to look for a better climate and after a short stay in Assam he settled at Perth, Western Australia, about 1901. Here he practised surgery until 1912, when he returned to England, resigning his post of surgeon to the Perth Hospital, which he had held with distinction for some years. When the war began he applied for a commission in the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry and was gazetted as a captain on 23 October 1914. He served on the Somme and in the Balkans, was wounded in the leg and spine, was laid up for two years, and then returned to Western Australia. Here he was appointed consulting surgeon to the Commonwealth Forces and was made Government surgical referee for Western Australia. He returned to England, settled at Bath, and died there on 11 November 1938. He married Zoe Fisher on 2 March 1897; she survived him without children. In 1942 Mrs Newton presented the College with some fine furniture designed and made by R E Newton. He was a man of great ability and marked character, absolutely honest in deed and thought.