Horatio Orishejolomi Thomas was a distinguished alumnus of Birmingham University Medical School. He was the first Nigerian surgeon to become FRCS and in April 1962 he was invited by the Federal government of Nigeria to establish a medical school and teaching hospital at Lagos. Later in that year (Se

Beric Stutter was born in North London. After graduating in 1938 at the Middlesex Hospital he held various resident posts with the intention of making a career in surgery. War intervened, he joined the Royal Navy and took part in the evacuation of Dunkirk. He served in Arctic convoys, the Mediterran

William Holt Lonsdale was born in Macclesfield on 8 March 1919, to Thomas William Holt Lonsdale and his wife Winifred. His father was a general practitioner, as were two paternal uncles. From Ellesmere College, Shropshire, he went to Manchester University Medical School in 1936 and qualified MB, ChB

Maurice Hershman received his medical education at St Bartholomew's Hospital and qualified MB BS with honours in 1941, obtaining the conjoint diploma in the same year. After qualification he was surgical registrar at the Postgraduate Medical School, London, assistant principal surgical officer at Cr

Robert Bell was born in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, on 22 November 1917. His father, Robert Duncan Bell, was a farmer, having previously been a missionary to the Ojibway and Chinook Indians. His mother was Violet Lydia Clarke, daughter of an actor-manager from Bilston in Staffordshire, England. Rob

Fred Hunt was born at Ilkeston, Derbyshire, on 5 March 1899, the son of John Hunt, a schoolmaster, and his wife Clara, née Beardsley, who had seven children. He was educated at the Elementary School and the County Secondary School in Ilkeston, and entered the London Hospital Medical College in 1916,

Born on 1 April 1915 in Doublebois, Liskeard, Cornwall, to a family that had served India for five generations, Peter Anthony Lane Roberts was educated at Cheltenham and then went with a classical scholarship to Wadham. At Oxford he read medicine, rowed and played rugby football, gaining a trial cap

John Howard Lees Ferguson was the third generation of a medical family. He was educated at Shrewsbury School where he was a classical scholar. Although pressed to continue in this field, he was determined to study medicine and entered Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, before moving to the Middl

Derek Teasdale was a consultant general surgeon in Rochdale. He was born on 11 February 1919, the eldest son of John Hall Teasdale, a house governor of Royal Waterloo Hospital, and Mabel Hannah Teasdale née Coldicott, a piano teacher. He attended Colfes School in Eltham and studied medicine at King’

Donald James Wurth was a senior surgeon at Sutherland District Hospital in Sydney, New South Wales. Born in Sydney on 1 January 1921, he was the eldest of the two sons of Wallace James Wurth LLD and his wife Phyllis Bertha née Cavill. His brother qualified as an anaesthetist. Their father was chanc

Hughlings Jackson, a distant cousin of the great neurologist, was born on 3 October 1912, the youngest of the five children of William Herbert Jackson, a former master mariner who owned a stevedoring business in London and later worked for the Mission to Seamen. His mother was Beatrice née Walker. F

Mike Butler helped establish and develop general surgical services in the Isle of Thanet, Margate and Ramsgate, Kent. He was born on 21 January 1924 in London, the third child and first son of Frank Butler and Ailsa Butler née Beckwith. His father served in the First World War and was a dentist, ori