William Eric Swaney, known as 'Bill' to his colleagues, was head of orthopaedics at Royal Melbourne Hospital. As head of a very busy orthopaedic unit, he mentored many young orthopaedic surgeons and trainees in the early days of the Australian orthopaedic training programme. Bill was born in Foot

Born on 10 January 1870 at 14 Buckingham Terrace, Glasgow, W, second child and eldest son of George Brodrick Edington, iron-founder, and Charlotte Jane his wife, daughter of Peter Watt, MD. He was educated at Kelvinside Academy and Glasgow University and at King's College, London. At Glasgow he grad

Born in 1849 at Riverina, New South Wales, son of Sydney Grandison Watson, RN, pastoralist on the Upper Murray. He was educated at the Scotch College, Melbourne, where he won the scripture prizes and was noted as an athlete. He was destined for the Church, but after a visit to the Pacific islands, w

Born 11 October 1882, the third child and only son of Samuel Buckley, FRCS, consulting physician to the Clinical (now the Northern) Hospital for Diseases of Women and Children, Manchester, and his wife, Florence Woolley. He was educated at Rugby and Trinity College, Cambridge, and took first-class h

Born on 4 August 1884 at Ealing, he was the son of William Digby (1849-1904), senior partner of William Hutchinson, East India merchants, and of his second wife, Sarah Maria Hutchinson. They were both from Wisbech, Cambridgeshire. William Digby was a journalist in England and India and a liberal pol

Vrasapillai Gabriel was born on 18 December 1885 in the town of Mannar in Northern Ceylon. He came from a well known Northern family who were the hereditary administrators in the day of the British Raj. His father was Mudaliyar V Varsapillai JP, UPM, Adigar of Musale. He was born into a family of tw

Victor Coppleson was born in 1893 in the small town of Wee Waa in the central part of New South Wales; he was educated there and at Sydney Grammar School. He then entered St Andrew's College in the University of Sydney, and graduated in 1915. After a period of resident appointments at the Royal Prin

Joseph Lannon was born on 11 March 1911. He was educated at the University of Witwatersrand and after qualifying in 1934 proceeded to train as a surgeon, passing the FRCS in 1938. During the second world war he joined the New Zealand forces and served in the New Zealand General Hospital in North Afr

Douglas Harold Barnbrook, known as 'Barney', was a consultant general surgeon and professor of anatomy at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. He studied medicine at Birmingham University, gaining his MRCS LRCP in 1946. He passed his FRCS in 1951 and in the same year emigrated to H

Born in Natal in 1911 and educated at Guy's Hospital, where he won the Hilton Dissection Prize in 1933 and qualified through London University and the Conjoint Board in 1936. After serving as house surgeon and junior demonstrator of anatomy at Guy's, he was appointed University Demonstrator of Anato

Keen was born on 4 July 1894 and qualified from Charing Cross Hospital Medical School during the first world war, and served as a medical officer in East Africa. After the war he obtained the FRCS, and practised as an ENT surgeon in Leicester for over fifteen years. He then diverted his career to an

Albert Ernest Coates was born on 28 January 1895 at Ballarat, Victoria. His father was a minor postal official and his grandparents had emigrated from Suffolk and Cornwall, attracted by the news of the gold discovery. Leaving school at the age of eleven he decided early to become a doctor and he