David Berry was professor and head of the department of dental prosthetics and orthodontics at the University of Bristol. He was born on 9 August 1921 in Bridgwater, Somerset, the son of Francis Grant Berry, a wholesale grocer, and Ethel Berry née Curtis. He had a younger sister, Hilary. After completing a year of medical school at Bristol, he joined the RAF in 1941 and went to Rhodesia to be trained as a pilot on tiger moths, coming out top of his class. He was then posted to north Africa, where he flew spitfires supporting the 7th Armoured Division (the Desert Rats). He subsequently returned to England, as a flying instructor at RAF Burnaston in Derbyshire. He was demobilised in October 1945, by which time he had already decided he did not want to return to studying medicine. By chance he met one of his Bristol professors on Reading station, who suggested he transfer to the dental school. This he did, qualifying in 1949 with the dental gold medal for his year. He went on to a resident house officer post at Bristol Royal Infirmary, during which time, as was the custom, his initials were carved into the wooden Victorian dental chair in the house officers’ room. Following the publication of the Teviot report on dentistry in 1946 and the establishment of the National Health Service, there was a rapid expansion in dental undergraduate numbers, which in Bristol increased fourfold over the next 20 years. David Berry, already identified by Arthur Darling, the newly appointed director of dental studies, as an outstanding student, was now appointed as a lecturer in dental prosthetics working under Arthur Oliver Chick David completed his MDS in 1952 but, realising that he required a doctorate to progress further in an academic career, he resigned in 1953 to undertake research in the department of anatomy. He soon joined the newly established British Society for the Study of Prosthetic Dentistry, of which he would become president ten years later. When Chick left Bristol to join the staff of the Royal Dental Hospital in London, David Barry was appointed as a consultant and senior lecturer in dental prosthetics, initially working under the nominal direction of Eric Bradford. It was only later that he became professor and head of the new department of dental prosthetics and orthodontics. This rather old-fashioned alliance between prosthetics and orthodontics was not abandoned in Bristol until the mid 1980s: it was founded on the need which both specialties had for technical laboratory support. The new professor of dental prosthetics became responsible for 30 production technicians and six dental instructors, and inherited the problem of filling technician vacancies. With the help of the regional dental officer, Tom Dowell, this serious problem was solved by the setting up of a Bristol-based south west regional technical training scheme, which soon re-established a skilled and contented body of technicians at the school. Following on from David’s earlier work in the department of anatomy, research in the department now focused on the interplay between dental occlusion and temporomandibular joint dysfunction. Around the same time, the early 1980s, visiting Americans were promoting ‘gnathology’, or the study of the masticatory system, its physiology, functional disturbances and treatment. Many patients were persuaded by their well-meaning general dental practitioners to undergo extensive full mouth dental reconstruction to cure or prevent temporomandibular joint pain. David and his postgraduate students showed the wide diurnal variation in dental occlusion – meaning there was no fixed intercuspal relationship upon which such treatment could be based. As a consequence, full mouth rehabilitation soon fell out of favour in the UK. David was a highly successful dental clinical dean, where his quietly spoken, sympathetic advice helped many a troubled student, and was subsequently pressed to accept the poisoned chalice of dean of the faculty of medicine, with overall governance of the schools of medicine, dentistry, veterinary and preclinical sciences and a budget of £30 million. He accepted the daunting task with his usual quiet efficiency. His period in office saw increasing emphasis on continuing professional education, which led to the establishment of regional postgraduate medical and dental deans throughout the UK. So, it was not surprising that, once he retired in March 1984, he took on the role of the first postgraduate dental dean for the south west region. In the same year, he had the satisfaction of seeing two of his former lecturers gaining chairs – Bob Yemm in Dundee and Chris Stephens, who headed the new department of child dental health at Bristol, which David had worked so hard to establish. David’s three-year period as a notionally part-time postgraduate dean saw the introduction of vocational training courses for newly qualified dentists, a great increase in the number of courses for dental practitioners, as well as an expansion of higher specialty training in the south west region. To his colleagues, Dave was a kind but very private person. On the eve of his retirement, he requested there be no presentation and no formal dinner, but the timely intervention of his wife Liz (née Morgan) ensured that an informal dinner was held with a few close friends and colleagues, which he greatly enjoyed. After he fully retired, he moved to Exebridge, where he became a full-time water bailiff. A fly fisherman of some repute, this suited him perfectly, with a house conveniently placed beside the river Exe and opposite the local pub. Shortly afterwards, he met up with an old RAF friend and they flew tiger moths from an aerodrome in Devon and Dave found, unlike his colleague, that he had lost none of his former skill. David Berry died peacefully on 31 October 2017 at the age of 96. He will be remembered by many generations of Bristol dental graduates as a quietly spoken, kindly and immensely knowledgeable clinician.