Duncan Mackinnon Hamilton was born on 28 October 1918. He was educated at Belmont, Mill Hill, Balliol College and Oxford University Medical School. He obtained the BA in 1939, BM BCh in 1942 and served in the RAMC during the war in Malta, Austria and Italy, attaining the rank of Major. He was a registrar at the Radcliffe Infirmary and senior surgical registrar at the Redhill County Hospital and obtained the FRCS in 1919. He joined the Colonial Medical Service, Uganda, and was district medical officer, surgeon and first assistant in surgery in the professorial unit at Makerere, Uganda. Later he was senior surgeon at Aden and advisor in surgery to the Ministry of Health, Southern Arabia, and in 1967 was appointed OBE. After independence was granted to South Arabia he worked in Liberia, Abu Dhabi and subsequently in England, mainly in Oxfordshire. One of his brothers is an FRCP and a physician in Oxford. An uncle was Major General W R D Hamilton, CBE, consulting physician to the army and Hon Physician to the Queen. In 1946 he married Jane Neve, daughter of a doctor and had three daughters and one son. His hobbies were natural history, ornithology, fishing and mountaineering. He died on 20 February 1974 at his home in Steeple Aston, aged 55 years.