John Turk was a former professor of pathology at the Institute of Basic Medical Sciences at the College. He was born on 2 October 1930 in Farnborough, Hampshire, where his father was a solicitor. From Malvern, where he specialised in classics, John went up to Guy’s Hospital to read medicine, qualify

Alan Thackray was professor of morbid histology at the Middlesex Hospital and a notable authority on breast, salivary and renal tumours. He was educated at Cambridge University, from which he won the senior university scholarship to the Middlesex Hospital. After house jobs he specialised in pathol

Born at Weybridge on 15 May 1862, third son of Arthur Cobbett, provision merchant, and his wife Betsey Holt, and their ninth and youngest child. He was educated at Lancing and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took third-class honours in the Natural Sciences tripos part I, 1884, and came under th

The fourth son of the Rev L Borrett Powell White, DD, Canon and Prebendary of St Paul's and Rector of St Mary Aldermary in the City of London, was born 21 April 1867. He entered St Paul's School in 1878 and left in July 1886, being then in Math VIII and having been elected a foundationer in 1879. He

Howard Walter Florey was born on 24 September 1898 at Adelaide. He was educated at St Peter's Collegiate School and at Adelaide University where he graduated in medicine in 1921. He then came to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and worked under Sherrington, obtaining a First in the Honour School of Physio

William St Clair Symmers held the Chair of Pathology at Charing Cross. He was born on 16 August 1917 in Belfast, where his father, William St Clair Symmers, an American who had been born in South Carolina and trained at the University of Aberdeen, was Professor of Pathology and Bacteriology, having

Herbert Spencer was born in Barnet, Hertfordshire, on 8 February 1915, the son of Hubert John Spencer, a coat manufacturer, and his wife Edith Maude, née Lodge. His early education was at Highgate Junior and Senior Schools, and he entered St Mary's Hospital Medical School for his medical studies, wh

Sir Roddy MacSween, professor of pathology at the University of Glasgow, was unquestionably one of Scotland’s most distinguished medical practitioners of his time. He was, as the popular press once put it, ‘top doc’, a man with a huge range of interests, both within and outside the sphere of medicin

Arnold Levene was a pathologist at the Royal Marsden Hospital who developed the technique of frozen section, meaning tissue samples could be analysed during operations. He was born on 7 December 1924 in Kingston upon Hull, the son of Solomon Levene, a Polish immigrant who became a commercial travell

Basil Morson was a consultant pathologist at St Mark’s Hospital, London and a pioneer of gastrointestinal pathology. He was born in Hampstead, London, one of three sons. His father, Albert Clifford Morson, was a urologist; his mother was Adela Frances Maud Morson née Phene. Through his father, he wa

Born at Goudhurst, Kent on 13 March 1882, fifth child and third son of William Alfred Benians, a schoolmaster, and Elizabeth Ackland his wife, he was educated at Bethany House School, Goudhurst and at the London Hospital, and qualified in 1907. Though he took the Fellowship in 1913, after serving as

Born in 1867 he was educated at St Bartholomew's Hospital, where he was a junior scholar in 1901, and won the Walsham prize and the Lawrence scholarship and gold medal in 1905, the year of his qualification. He served as house surgeon at St Bartholomew's, and was subsequently casualty officer, regis