Denis Naldrett White was born in Bristol. He completed his premedical and medical education at Cambridge. This was followed by graduate training at the London Hospital with Russell Brain, Hospital for Sick Children, National Hospital for Nervous Diseases and the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London, where he completed a senior registrar post in 1948. That same year he was recruited by Dr. Ford Connell, Head of the Department of Medicine, to Queen’s University.