Ian James Gordon was a consultant surgeon in Bendigo, Australia. He was born in Aberdeen on 29 October 1924. His father, James Lendrum Gordon, was a mercantile marine officer and his mother, Mary Ironside Sherriffs, was the daughter of a farmer. He was educated at Robert Gordon's College, Aberdeen,

William O'Flynn was born in County Limerick on 12 April 1927, into a family with a long tradition in medicine as general practitioners. Unfortunately no details of his forbears are available. After education at Presentation College, Bray, County Wicklow he entered the National University of Ireland

Robert (Robin) Welsh was born on 23 April 1928 in Witbank, Transvaal, South Africa, the eldest son of Dr Robert William Hepburn Welsh, a general practitioner in Pretoria for thirty years, and Evelyn Jessie Watson. He was educated at St John's College, Johannesburg, and the University of Witwatersran

Ellery Arthur Mulvihill Ryan was born in 1917 in Melbourne, the son of a leading ophthalmologist who exerted a great influence on his son's character and interest in sport of many kinds. He went to school as a boarder at Xavier College from the age of six till he was eighteen and left with the prize

Joseph Patrick O’Byrne McMullin (initially known as ‘Shos’) was a general surgeon at St Vincent’s Hospital, St Stephen’s Green/Elm Park, Dublin. He was born in 1921, the eldest son of Joseph Columba McMullin, a surgeon at the Shiel Hospital, Ballyshannon, and later county surgeon in Cavan, and Mary

Frank Haine was born in Little Wolford, Oxfordshire, on 13 November 1909, the eldest of four boys. His father, Robert John Haine, was a farmer who had moved from Somerset to the north Cotswolds after the death of his first wife. His mother, Marianne Baines Horne, was the daughter of a corn merchant

Brian Gadsby Peet was the only child of Edward Gadsby Peet, a master brewer, and Hilda Harriet Harden, a nurse who had worked as a theatre sister in France in the first world war. He was educated first at the Heath Grammar School in Halifax until the age of thirteen and then sent to board at Denston

James Alan Millar White was born in Edinburgh on 14 January 1925, the son of John Letham White, a public works contractor and a nephew of Frankie Jardine FRCS Ed of the Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh. His early education was at George Watson's, Edinburgh and at Edinburgh Academy until 1941 when he went