David Scott Shovelton was the first professor of conservative dentistry at the University of Birmingham. He was born on 12 September 1925. His father, Leslie John Shovelton, was a dentist, as were two of his uncles; his mother was Marion De Winton Shovelton née Scott. He was educated at the Downs School at Colwall, where he was taught English by W H Auden, and went on to the King’s School in Worcester. In 1943 he was accepted to study dentistry at the University of Birmingham, as his father had done before him. Halfway through his LDS course he was awarded a Nuffield Foundation scholarship to read physiology for two years and take a BSc degree. After qualifying, he was a house surgeon at Birmingham Dental Hospital and then worked with his father in his general dental practice in Evesham, Worcestershire. He subsequently spent two years, from 1951 to 1953, as a dental officer in the RAF, at Gloucester and Pembroke Dock. He decided on a teaching career, and, in 1953, was appointed as a lecturer in operative dental surgery at Birmingham under Alex MacGregor. He became a senior lecturer in 1960 and, in 1964, a professor of conservative dentistry, a post he held for 25 years. From 1974 to 1978 he was also director of the dental school. His research on the repair of the human dental pulp following cavity preparation, published in the 1960s and 1970s, was pioneering and was responsible for a new understanding of the response of odontoblasts to caries and mechanical insults. Shovelton was president of the British Society for Restorative Dentistry (from 1970 to 1971), a consultant on the dental practice committee of the Fédération Dentaire Internationale (from 1972 to 1979), a member of the General Dental Council (from 1974 to 1989) and a board member of the Faculty of Dental Surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons of England (from 1983 to 1991). From 1984 to 1985 he was a member of the Department of Health’s committee of enquiry into unnecessary dental treatment. The influential findings, published in 1986, were known as the Schanschieff report, after the committee’s chairman (*Report of the committee of enquiry into unnecessary dental treatment*, HMSO). He retired in September 1989. In his retirement he learnt more about wine, travelled in his caravan, especially in France, and cultivated his garden. Predeceased by his wife Pearl (née Holland), whom he married in 1949, Shovelton died on 17 November 2012. He was 87. He was survived by their two sons and their families.