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Obituaries

Geoffrey Newton

BMJ 2012; 345 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.e5684 (Published 05 September 2012) Cite this as: BMJ 2012;345:e5684
  1. Tony Henry

Geoffrey Newton (“Geoff”) was born in Salford, Greater Manchester, one of three children of a sheet metal worker and his wife. From Stockport School, he won a state scholarship to read medicine at Manchester University, where he met his future wife Pat, a fellow medical student who would become a general practitioner. He was a keen sailor and founded the university’s yacht club, and the Association of Northern Universities Sailing Clubs

Geoff did his national service with the Royal Army Medical Corps in Malaya. At the end of their three years there he and Pat drove home overland, through Burma, India, and the Middle East. He had to reline the clutch in a field in Kashmir.

Geoff was appointed as medical officer to the Australian Antarctic National Research Expedition in 1960. In addition to his medical duties, he was also the official photographer, based at Mawson. Mount Newton, a peak in Prince Charles Mountains mapped by the expedition, is named after him. After this, he and Pat worked for a time as doctors, driving a camper van round Australia and New Zealand.

Geoff then did his surgical and orthopaedic training in Manchester and Oswestry. While there in the early 1970s, Geoff developed and tested his own knee …

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