Alan Robert Trist was a surgeon in Sydney, New South Wales. He was born in New Haven, Connecticut, USA, where his Australian father, also Alan Robert Trist, a forester, was studying at Yale University. Trist’s mother was Ivy Alma Trist née Priebe. The family returned to Australia when he was two and settled in Queensland. Trist senior went on to become conservator of forests for Queensland. Trist studied medicine at the University of Queensland and qualified in 1951. In 1954 he left Australia for England and in 1956 was living in Harlesden, London. In the same year he married Margaret Christine McDonald in Marylebone, London. They had two children. Trist gained his FRCS in 1957 and returned to Australia. By the early 1970s he was living in Fairfield, a western suburb of Sydney, New South Wales. Alan Robert Trist died on 27 May 2015 in Manly, New South Wales. He was 87.