Barbara Elizabeth Stead was an ENT surgeon at Nottingham General Hospital. She was born Barbara Elizabeth Wood on 13 November 1932 in East Dulwich, London, the daughter of Norman Victor Mark Wood, a clerk, and Violet Annie Wood née Dight. She studied medicine in Leeds and qualified with the conjoint examination in 1957. She gained her diploma in laryngology and otology in 1960 and her FRCS in 1971. She was a registrar for the Metropolitan Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital in Kensington, London and then a supernumerary senior registrar in ENT surgery in Nottingham. She was a member of the Otology Joint Medical Research Council/National Physical Laboratory Working Group on Industrial Noise and Hearing. She lived in Burton on the Wolds, Leicestershire, where she was a member of the Woodland for Burton committee. In 1968 she married John Cawthorne Stead, a research and teaching physicist. Barbara Stead died on 12 December 2018. She was 86.