Robert Allez Rotherham Wallace, the elder child and only son of Robert Wallace and Amelia (née Rotherham), was born on 2 November 1888 at Queenscliffe, Victoria, Australia. After early education at Melbourne Grammar School he had architectural training at Perth Technical School and worked as a junior architect to Sir John Monash. He later secured two scholarships on switching to medicine at Sydney University where he graduated with honours in 1911. Though the present medical degree at Sydney is the MB BS, all records confirm that his first qualification is correctly shown above. After serving as house surgeon at the Alfred Hospital, Sydney, and other resident jobs, he came to England and took the FRCS in 1914. At the outbreak of the first world war he joined the RAMC until 1916 and was then invalided as a Captain to the RAAMC base hospital at Melbourne. On leaving the service he was outpatient surgeon to the Melbourne Children's Hospital from 1916 to 1923. He then returned to England in 1924 and took surgical appointments to outpatients at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, and at Huntingdon. From 1925 to 1928 he worked as an ENT surgeon in South East London under the old LCC medical service, and then as a general surgeon at the Herts and Essex Hospital and in general practice at Bishop's Stortford from 1928 until his retirement in 1949. During his varied career both in Australia and here, Wallace had enjoyed contact with Hamilton Russell and Sir Charles Ryan in Melbourne; Sir Alexander MacCormick in Sydney, and with Sir John Bland-Sutton and Cecil Joll in England. He married Eleanor Dora Watson in 1925 and they had three children: one son is a doctor, another a dentist and the daughter is a trained nurse. Both in Melbourne and later in Bishop's Stortford he was medical officer to establishments which took care of foster-children. He was an honorary life fellow of the Hunterian Society of London and, outside his professional work, he was interested in joinery and had been keen on swimming, rowing, and both rifle and game shooting. He died in Bishop's Stortford in June, 1980 and was survived by his three children, his wife having died in 1974.