David Martin Burgess was a consultant orthopaedic surgeon in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. He was born in London on 10 February 1928, the son of Gilbert Beckett Burgess and Margaret Jessie Burgess née Morley. He attended Charing Cross Hospital Medical School and qualified in 1954. He gained his FRCS in 1960 and became a fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in 1964. He was a fellow of the British Orthopaedic Association. In 1955 he married Jeanne Howells. Burgess died on 26 April 2020. He was 92.