Arthur Cecil Barker Biggs was born in North London on 9 March 1885. His father, John Maundy Biggs, was a general practitioner and a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. Florence Elizabeth Biggs, née Hopkinson, his mother, was the daughter of the originator of the Hopkinson piano. He w

Born at Warrenport, Co Down, the son of Isaac Corkey and a nephew of Sir William Whitla, Professor of Medicine at Belfast. He was educated at the University of Dublin, where he won a medical scholarship at Trinity College in 1913. He served with distinction during the Great War, winning the Military

Born at Nhill in the west of Victoria in 1894, he moved to Melbourne with his parents at an early age. He was educated at Brighton Grammar School and the University of Melbourne, qualifying in 1916. He joined the Australian Imperial Force immediately, without serving any resident hospital appointmen

Owen David Morris, born in Port Madoc, Wales, on 24 February 1916, was the eldest son of John Morris, master mariner, and Mary Jones. He was educated at Port Madoc Grammar School and St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College, where he qualified MRCS LRCP in 1939. He was the twenty-second member of h

Arnold Gourevitch was a consultant surgeon in Birmingham. He was born in Paris on 24 February 1914, the son of Russian Jewish émigrés. At the outbreak of the first world war his parents fled to England, eventually settling in Birmingham. His father, Mendel, later qualified as a doctor and became a g

Henry James Drew-Smythe was born at Northampton on 1 June 1891, the first child of Frank Thompson Smythe and Ada (née Drew). He was educated at Taunton School and Bristol University where he won the gold medal in his final year at the Medical School. After resident appointments at Bristol General an

Arthur Reginald Lister was born in Totteridge, north of London, on 4 April 1895 into a distinguished medical family. Lord Lister was his great-uncle, his father, Sir William Lister, and his cousin, Arthur Lister, were well-known eye surgeons, and one of his brothers was a consultant physician at Ply

Henry Moore was born in Fiji in 1912, and graduated MB BS from Sydney in 1937. Following graduation he came to Britain with two research fellowships in 1938. He served in the RAMC throughout the war in the Middle East, Italy and Western Europe, and was awarded the MC in Belgium (for 'liberating a ca

The youngest of four sons of Samuel Farrant, of Taunton, Somerset. His father had a widely extended practice around Taunton, and was well known in the county with its large sporting interests, as well as being Surgeon to the Hospital. (*Lancet*, 1903, ii, 846.) All four brothers were educated at Wes

Douglas Erith Derry studied medicine at Edinburgh University, graduating in 1903; he was Crichton Research Scholar in Anatomy 1903-04, and Demonstrator in Anatomy. Very soon, however, Derry went to Egypt, and by 1906 was Assistant Professor of Anatomy at the Government School of Medicine, Cairo. In

Andrew McKie Reid was born on 14 April 1893 and educated at Liverpool University. In 1914 he interrupted his undergraduate career to be commissioned in the King's Liverpool Regiment, and was awarded the Military Cross in 1916 when serving on the Somme with the Machine Gun Corps. In 1918 he was wound

It could be said that had Tom Smiley not been a cigarette smoker in 1941, his patients and colleagues, thoracic surgery and his own family and local community would never have known him as a fine surgeon, husband and father and dedicated churchman, for it was a cigarette-case in his breast-pocket wh