Isidore Spiro served in two world wars. In the first world war he served as an ordinary infantryman in France. He was prevented from sitting the Final FRCS examination in 1939 because he had been called up, and when he eventually obtained leave from the British Expeditionary Force in order to sit he

Born on 23 June 1901 in New Amsterdam, British Guiana, he was the son of William George Boase, MRCS, LRCP. He was educated at Mount St Mary's, a Jesuit college in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, and St Thomas's Hospital, London, where he was influenced by the late Philip Mitchiner, then resident assistant

Tom Casey was born on 8 October 1929 in Limerick, the son of Michael Casey, a farmer. He was educated at University College, Dublin, and after specialising in ophthalmology became registrar first at the Westminster Hospital and later at Moorfields. He possessed a happy combination of inspiration, su

Iqbal Singh Chatha, who originally practised as Iqbal Singh, received his medical education at the Glancy Medical School, Amritsar, whence he qualified MB BS Punjab in 1956. Coming to Britain he obtained the DO in 1966 and became a Fellow of the College in 1967. He practised as an ophthalmologist

Charles Malcolm Phillips, the only son of Sir Charles Phillips, CBE, a company director, and of Sylvia Maud Phillips (née Schunke), was born at Nairobi, Kenya, on 5 July 1918. He was educated at St. Clare Preparatory School in Walmer, Kent, and at Sherborne School where he secured an Open Science Pr

Munawar Ahmad was educated at Punjab University and graduated MB BS in 1961 from King Edward Medical College, Lahore. After house appointments at the Mayo Hospital he took his primary FRCS in Lahore, and went to the USA in 1962 as an intern. Three years later he came to Britain and started his ca

Kandiah Vythilingham was born in Ceylon on 7 November 1910 and qualified with the LMS of Ceylon in 1937. He joined the Department of Health Services in 1939 and was appointed an acting medical officer at the Victoria Memorial Eye Hospital, Colombo. Thenceforward he specialized in ophthalmology, hold

Dudley Plunket Gurd was born in Belfast on 18 June 1910 the elder son of Frederick Gurd, a pharmaceutical chemist, and Annie Jane (née Glenn), and was educated at Belfast Royal Academy and Queen's University, Belfast, qualifying in 1932. After early house appointments in Belfast, Liverpool and Londo

Brian Harcourt was born on 3 March 1934, the son of John Ellison Harcourt, a scientific instrument manufacturer in Liverpool and Bertha Florence Kneen. His grandfather, Richard Eugene Harcourt FRCS (1858-1921), was an ophthalmic surgeon, also in Liverpool. Harcourt was educated at Quarry Bank High S

Arnost Hirtenstein was born in Slovakia in 1909 and qualified MD in Prague in 1934. After military service during which he developed an interest in ophthalmology he entered general practice in a small town in Northern Bohemia but after three years, in 1939, he was arrested by the Gestapo and forced

Lewis Herbert Savin was born in London on 26 March 1901. His parents were missionaries who had fled from China at the time of the Boxer rebellion a few months before his birth. Shortly after, his father and mother returned to the hospital that his father had founded at Chao Tung in Yunnan. He used t

John Romano was born on 24 May 1926 into a Jewish-Italian family in Cairo, where he was educated and subsequently qualified in medicine. His father Albert Romano was a barrister and his mother was Marie Afif. In Cairo he became fluent in English, French, Italian and Arabic, skills that he later used