Eva Adeline Shipton was born on 13th September 1900, the daughter of Commander John Percival Shipton RN and the eldest of his three children. At a time when Australia still looked to the Royal Navy for protection of her sea lanes, Commander Shipton was sent to Australia to take charge of Garden Island. He was accompanied by his wife and Eva was born in Sydney. When, in 1914, Commander Shipton was recalled to England on the outbreak of World War I, his family remained in Australia. As a child, Eva had the misfortune to suffer from both osteomyelitis and Perthe's Disease, the latter resulting in some degree of permanent disability.

For Eva, early schooling comprised short periods at Redlands in Cremorne, and at Ravenswood in the North Shore suburb of Gordon. It achieved completion at the small primary school in Austinmer on the South Coast of NSW. Secondary schooling under a private tutor prepared her for matriculation in the bursary exams which enabled her to enrol in the Faculty of Science at Sydney University. Eva graduated BSc in 1921 with physiology as her major subject. She subsequently entered the medical faculty and graduated MB in 1925. She was one of the first women to become an RMO at Sydney Hospital where she demonstrated a marked interest in pathology.

In 1928 she commenced practice as a pathologist in Macquarie Street and in 1938 she was invited by Dr Cyril Shearman to become a partner in his extensive pathology practice at 135 Macquarie Street, Sydney. Over the years that partnership has attracted a number of very well-equipped young pathologists, being known in latter years as the Shipton, Lindsell and Hale partnership. Eva served many hospitals: St Margaret's from 1932 to 1974, Royal South Sydney from 1930 to 1946, St Luke's, the Mater Misericordiae Hospital, Hornsby Hospital and the Seventh Day Adventist Hospital at Wahroonga. She was among the first to use blood groups in paternity suits in NSW and wrote "A Contribution to the Study of the Heredity of the Blood Groups in Australian Families" (Med J Aust 1957, 1, 273-7). She also developed a considerable interest in lupus erythematosis cells and produced "A Contribution to the Study of Collagen Disease and the LE phenomenon" (Med J Aust 1957, 1, 911-15).

For Eva behind every test that she was asked to perform there was a human being - the patient - whom she found deeply interesting. It was therefore not surprising that in 1930 she became a member of a group known as the Association of Physicians of Australasia, a group which after a somewhat prolonged period of gestation was to become in 1938 the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, with Eva as one of its foundation fellows. Eva Shipton was a woman of quiet but considerable personal charm and of most distinctive appearance. Her long white gloves, her dark, broadbrimmed hat and, on occasions, her feather boa, together with her limping gait provided a unique picture. In 1974 she was awarded the CBE for her services to medicine.