Syed Zafar Haider was professor of surgery at King Edward Medical College, Lahore, Pakistan. He was born on 27 December 1927 in Lahore; the family’s ancestral home was in Bazaar-e-Hakiman in the Bhati Gate area of Lahore. His father, Mohammad Shah, was a lawyer who also held a masters’ degree in Eng

'Dare' Watkins was born in Bristol on 29 December 1925. His father, Henry Herbert Watkins, and mother, Brenda Florence née Taylor-Milton, were both dentists. He was educated at King William College, Isle of Man, where he was an enthusiastic sportsman. Later, he went to Liverpool University Medical S

John Gordon Smart was appointed to the Leicester Royal Infirmary as a general surgeon with an interest in urology in 1965. Later he became the first pure urologist to the hospital and was responsible for building up the urology unit to become the largest in the Trent region. Possessing an administra

Donald Beard was the first director of surgery at Modbury Hospital in South Australia and served with distinction in the Korean and Vietnam wars. He was born in Adelaide, South Australia, on 22 February 1925, the son of Harold Douglas Beard, a civil servant, and Alison Mavis Beard née Wright, a hous

Alastair Robson - the pioneer neurosurgeon in Canberra - was born in Sydney in 1926 and went to Shore School in north Sydney where his father was Headmaster. He rowed in the Shore VIII, and after leaving school he coached the senior crew. It was at Shore that he met his future wife, Anne who became

Gaston Benett was born on 12 November 1922 in Poudre D'Or, Mauritius, the son of Raymond Benett, a hospital pharmacist, and his wife, Suzanne, née Davis, a teacher. He attended the Royal College in Mauritius from where he won a scholarship to Cambridge for his pre-clinical studies. He then entere

Ken Brearley started life in Hampton (Melbourne) where he attended both Hampton Primary and Hampton High schools before winning a scholarship for Years 9-12 at Scotch College, which was quite some distance away in Hawthorn. In 1948, having won a place into Medicine at the University of Melbourne in