Ralph St Leger Brockman was born on 3 June 1889 and trained at Cambridge and St Bartholomew's, qualifying in 1912 with the Conjoint Diploma. During his student career he won several prizes and awards. After house appointments he served as a medical officer in the Royal Navy for five years. On his re

William Heneage Ogilvie was born at Valparaiso on 14 July 1887. His father William Ogilvie was an engineer from Dundee and went to Chile for business reasons. Educated at Clifton College and New College, Oxford, where he gained first class honours in physiology in 1910, Heneage Ogilvie proceeded

Arthur Lawrence Abel was born on 15 November 1895, the son of the Reverend Arthur E Abel, a congregational minister, and he preached in his father's pulpit at the age of 18 years. He did his medical training at University College Hospital, graduating in 1917. He obtained the Fellowship of the Royal

Francis Younghusband (1938) summarised this life as follows: 'Somervell is no mean mountaineer: he is one of five who have reached the 28,000 feet level. He is no mean painter: his picture of Everest adorns the walls of the Royal Geographical Society's House. He is no mean musician: he has transcrib

Norbert Leo Maxwell Reader was born at Marshfield, Gloucestershire, on 13 October 1885. His father, Jeremiah Reader, was a doctor of medicine. He was educated at Wakefield Grammar School, Stonyhurst and at Leeds University, where he won the anatomy prize. He went from there to Guy's Hospital where h

Rodney Maingot often used to speak of his parrot which resided in his consulting rooms. He claimed it had been trained to say 'You've got gallstones - send for Rodney' to those who entered. Showman? Perhaps, according to some. Master class abdominal surgeon? Certainly, according to the innumerable s

Muriel Landau was born on 21 January 1895 and educated at Dame Alice Owens School, Islington where she gained an entrance scholarship to the London School of Medicine for Women. She qualified in 1918 and after house appointments at the Royal Free and at Queen Charlotte's Hospitals was appointed regi

Kenneth Holl Macmillan was born on February 3 1891 in Lee, S.E. London, the eldest son of John W McMillan, a banker, and his wife, Florence. His younger brother became a chest physician. Always an individualist he, alone of his family, decided to change the spelling of his name from that on his dipl

John Whittingdale, the son of Dr John Flasby Lawrance Whittingdale, MB Cambridge, MRCS, and of Marie Whittingdale (née Jennings), was born on 14 June 1894 in Sherborne, Dorset. He was to spend most of his long life in that place. After education at Sherborne Preparatory School and Sherborne School,