John Beal was born in London on 27 April 1906. His father, Richard Edward Bruce Beal, OBE, MC, was a solicitor, and his mother, Winifred Morgan, was the daughter of John Hammond Morgan FRCS, formerly senior surgeon at Charing Cross and Great Ormond Street, and a member of council. He entered Harrow as a scholar, and won the war memorial medical scholarship to University College, Oxford. There he was not only a boxing blue in 1926, but won the Welshe memorial prize for anatomical drawing, the Theodore Williams scholarship in anatomy, and the Radcliffe exhibition in pharmacology. He did his clinical training at Bart's, where he won the surgical pathology prize, the Brackenbury scholarship in surgery, and the Kirkes scholarship and gold medal in clinical medicine. He completed house jobs at Bart's, and having passed the FRCS, then went to UCH as radium registrar and assistant to the surgical unit. As a Territorial at the outbreak of war he joined the RAMC and served as a surgical specialist throughout the duration. He married the sister of Mervyn Morel FRCS in 1946 and they had a son who obtained a BSc in chemistry. In retirement he studied the history of art, and obtained a second BA from the University of London in that subject in 1972. He probably died in 2001, survived by his son, who notified the College of his father's demise by letter in January, 2002.