Daniel Turnberg was born in Manchester and educated at North Cheshire Jewish School and at Cheadle Hulme School. At Leeds Medical School he took an intercalated BSc in psychology.
After qualifying in 1994 he did his house jobs in Bradford and Wakefield, following this by six months as a senior house officer in the accident and emergency department at University College Hospital, London, and two years in various posts at Hemel Hempstead Hospital, where he was particularly happy. From there he went to St Helier and St George’s Hospitals as senior house officer and registrar in renal medicine. He then spent two years in renal medicine on the north London rotation at the Royal Free and North Middlesex hospitals.
A National Kidney Research Fund fellowship with Mark Walport and Marina Botto enabled him to take his PhD. He had recently returned to the Royal Free to a lectureship and was investigating immunological mechanisms underlying HIV- associated kidney disease.
He was on a cycling holiday in Malawi, and took a trip in a light aircraft to a game reserve. The plane crashed, killing the pilot and all passengers.
He was regarded by colleagues and senior staff as an exemplary scientist and clinician, whose empathy with patients and bedside manner was a model of good doctoring.
