Robert Ainslie Ross was born in 1876 and came over from South Africa to study medicine in Edinburgh, where he was awarded a Dunlop Scholarship and was the first South African to win the Ettles Scholarship. He captained the University Rugby team and graduated in 1900, proceeding to take the Conjoint Diploma the following year. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1908 and then returned to South Africa to be appointed surgeon to the Children's Hospital, Johannesburg, and lecturer on the surgery of children in the University of Witwatersrand. He died at his home in Grahamstown at the age of 89 on 12 November 1965, and was survived by his wife and a daughter who became a nurse at St Thomas's Hospital, London.