Dipak Bhatia was head of India's national family planning programme in the 1960s. He was born in Punjab on 27 November 1909 and educated in Lahore, leaving high school at the age of 14. After receiving an MB BS degree from Lahore Medical College, he went to England and stayed in London for a few yea

Born in Eastbourne on 27 September 1908 to D G Gilbert, Headmaster of Roborough School, Eastbourne, Gilbert attended his father's school and then went to St Bartholomew's Hospital where he qualified with the conjoint examination in 1932 and became house surgeon to Girling Ball and Blundell Bankart.

Bernard Williams was a senior surgeon in Portsmouth. He was born into a medical family on 26 August 1910, his father, Morgan Watkin Williams, being a general practitioner in Morriston, Swansea. His mother, Beryl Jane née Gabe, was the daughter of a GP. He received his schooling at Marlborough Colleg

R Kesavan Nayar was professor of surgery at Medical College, Trivandrum, and the first superintendent of the Medical College Hospital. He was born in Trivandrum, southern India, on 6 September 1910, the second child and eldest son of Raman Tampi, a physician and chief medical officer of Travancore s

Sholem Glaser was a general surgeon at the Royal United Hospital in Bath. Born on 12 May 1912 in Cape Town, the son of Hessel Glaser, a fruit-grower, and Sonia née Zuckerman, he was educated at the South African College School and the University of Cape Town, where he followed his cousin Solly Zucke

Brendan Hickey was a consultant general surgeon and urologist at Morrison Hospital, Swansea, and spent some time as a professor of surgery in Khartoum and as a surgical specialist to the Iraq government. He was born on 20 June 1912 in Newton Hyde, Cheshire, where his father, John Edward Hickey, was

William Henry Daines Trubshaw was born in Johannesburg in 1908, his father having gone to South Africa during the Boer War and became headmaster of the Mayfair School in Johannesburg. Trubshaw went to King Edward's School and Houghton College, Johannesburg and then came to St Bartholomew's Hospital

William Rotherham Hunter was born in Skelmersdale, near Ormskirk, on 18 February 1911, and was educated at Ormskirk Grammar School and the University of Liverpool, graduating MB BCh in 1933. He took the Conjoint Diploma the same year, and after junior posts at the David Lewis Northern Hospital, and

Andrew Killey Monro was the son of James Donald Monro MD, of London, and Beatrice, née Killey. His grandfather was also a medical doctor. He was born on 27 August 1907 in London and was educated at Highgate Junior School, Epsom College and Pembroke College, Cambridge. He trained at the London Hospit

'Tim' Merrington was an accomplished surgeon whose career was blighted but whose spirit was undimmed by multiple sclerosis. Within four years of becoming consultant surgeon to University College Hospital, an appointment for which his earlier achievements had long marked him out, he developed the fir

Robert Gerrett Reid, the son of the Rev Dr James Reid, DD, a Presbyterian Minister and well-known preacher, and of Isa Reid (née Gerrett), a school mistress, was born at Oban, Scotland, on 21 September 1909. He was educated at Roborough School, Eastbourne, the Leys School, Cambridge, and Guy's Hospi

Born in Sandwich, Kent, on 30 September 1910, John Richard Rose's father, William Richard Rose, was a wholesale grocer, JP, county councillor and was twice Mayor of Sandwich. His mother was Beatrice Matilda Paragreen, a musician and poet, and a governor of St Thomas's Hospital. He was educated at Si