Donald Reid was a consultant general surgeon at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton, and at Cuckfield Hospital. He was born in Southgate, Middlesex on 21 November 1930. His father, Marcus Reid, was a solicitor who worked for the Inland Revenue; his mother, Winifred Mary Reid née Stephens, was a housewife. He was educated at Merchant Taylors’ School in Northwood and, very much outside the family tradition, he chose to read medicine. He went up to Oriel College, Oxford with an organ scholarship and qualified in 1954. The majority of his surgical training was at St Thomas’ Hospital in London, as a house surgeon, casualty officer, registrar and senior registrar. Throughout his career he had a special affinity with St Thomas' and his surgical mentor John Pullan. He spent his military service as a major in the RAMC in Münster, West Germany and then, in 1966, was a research fellow firstly at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota and then at Birmingham, Alabama. At both Minnesota and Alabama he worked under the pioneering cardiac surgeon John W Kirklin, the first surgeon to perform open cardiac surgery using the heart-lung machine. On his return to the UK, he presented the Royal College of Surgeons’ Arris and Gale lecture in 1967 on ‘Intravenous fat infusion’ and was a Hunterian professor for 1968, the topic of his Hunterian lecture being ‘Body fluid compartments during surgery’. In 1968 he was appointed as a consultant general surgeon at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton, and in mid Sussex at Cuckfield Hospital. In 1991 the new Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath replaced Cuckfield. His work included emergency general surgery at both Brighton and mid Sussex and the emergency load was heavy. Although a generalist, he particularly specialised in breast and endocrine surgery, and he had a special fondness of mid Sussex, where he was clinical tutor at the postgraduate medical centre for nine years. He was an examiner in anatomy for the primary FRCS from 1981 and later became chairman of the board of examiners until 1987. He was elected president of the Brighton and Sussex Medico-Chirurgical Society for the year 1991. After retirement in 1995, he continued with a medico-legal practice, and intermittently as a locum consultant in mid Sussex. Throughout his life he greatly enjoy music, particularly playing the organ. He acted as village organist for Ditchling Parish Church and played at weddings for family and friends. He enjoyed walking, especially on the South Downs, and also felt a great attachment to Dorset, where he spent happy holidays as a child. He married Rhoda Susanna Allison (Sue) in 1963. Sue became head of english at Burgess Hill School for Girls and they had three children, Philip, Helen and Simon, who all became doctors. He died suddenly at home from a myocardial infarction on 25 October 2020 shortly before his 90th birthday.