Richard Vasey ‘Dick’ Fiddian was a consultant general surgeon at the Luton and Dunstable Hospital from 1964 to 1989. He was born on 6 October 1923 in Ashton-under-Lyne in Lancashire, where his father, James Victor Fiddian, was a general practitioner-surgeon. His mother, Doris Mary née White, came fr

'Johnnie' John was born on 9 July 1921 in New Tredegar. He was educated at Bedwellty Grammar School. Reports have it that he was a talented scholar with a reluctance to apply his maximum effort either to work or to play. On leaving school in 1940 he entered the Royal Air Force and trained as a navig

James Keith Ross was a leading cardiac surgeon, and one of the team that performed the first cardiac transplant in Britain. He was born in London on 9 May 1927. His father, Sir James Paterson Ross, was later to become professor of surgery at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, Surgeon to the Royal Household

Mary Frances Lucas was born on 15 August 1885, in Gravesend, the daughter of George John Lucas, who was a dental surgeon. She attended Rochester Grammar School for Girls and Eversley School, Folkestone. She entered the London (Royal Free Hospital) School of Medicine for Women in the 1904/5 sessio

Alexander Walt was a former president of the American College of Surgeons. He was born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1923 and went to school and university there. After qualifying in 1948 he completed his house jobs at Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town, before winning a Dominion studentship to