John Hueston was born in Hawthorn, Australia, on 16 January 1926, the son of John Albert Hueston, a civil servant, and Hazel Minnie, a teacher. He was educated at Trinity Grammar School, Melbourne, and at Trinity College, Melbourne University. He qualified in 1948, having gained a number of undergraduate prizes, and took resident surgical posts in the Royal Melbourne Hospital. In 1952 he joined the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps and went to the Korean war as a surgical specialist. In the following year he came to England, passed the FRCS and served as senior house officer to Sir Archibald McIndoe at East Grinstead. From then onwards he devoted himself to plastic surgery, in which he excelled. While in England, he took time off to marry Constance Berndt, whom he had previously known in Melbourne, and together they returned to that city where he joined a well-known practice undertaking plastic surgery. Appointed as consultant to the Royal Melbourne Hospital he rapidly built up a reputation and soon had his own private practice set up in Royal Parade. He gained international recognition first for his work on Dupuytren's contracture on which he produced a monograph in 1964 and which was the subject of his Hunterian professorial lecture in the same year. However, his interests and his expertise covered much of his specialty and he became a well-known lecturer in Europe and North America. He returned to the College to deliver the McIndoe Memorial Lecture in 1984. To his assistants he was a hard taskmaster, a perfectionist who expected nothing less than his own high standards but who nevertheless inspired their loyalty. In spite of his busy professional life he found time for sailing and tennis and for a historical study of the redoutable Baron Dupuytren, which he was further able to pursue when he retired to Provence, where he died on 29 December 1993, survived by his wife Connie and daughters Penny, Jill and Rosemary.