Linton Snaith was born in 1909 at Eaglescliffe, Teeside. He qualified MB BS with honours at Durham in 1932 and gained that University's MS in 1936 and MD in 1940. Soon after gaining his Fellowship he decided to specialise in gynaecology. After a post in obstetrics at the North Middlesex Hospital he was appointed medical officer with joint responsibility for both a new hospital maternity unit in Newcastle upon Tyne and the domiciliary midwifery services. A gastric ulcer denied him military service but he made up for this by establishing a wartime consultant service for Cumbria and Northumberland and an evacuee maternity unit at Gilsland on the Roman Wall. After the war he pioneered, with two physicians, a team service for pregnancies complicated by heart disease or diabetes. In 1950 he introduced general practitioners as clinical associates in his unit, and fifteen years later encouraged the introduction of a hospital-based family planning clinic. His special interest, which brought him international recognition, was in the diagnosis and management of pelvic tuberculosis, and he recruited several talented young overseas doctors to come to train in his unit. A very tall man, he was a noted teacher and a tolerant taskmaster, who represented the Fellows on the council of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. Predeceased by his wife, Kay, he left a son, Michael, (a doctor), two daughters, Judy and Sue, and six grandchildren. He died on 4 February 1996.