Eric John Smith was a consultant surgeon at the Royal Free Hospital, London. He was born on 31 March 1910 in Norwood, Surrey, the second son of Robert Percy and Edith Smith. His early life was overshadowed by the death from Hodgkin’s disease of his elder brother who had been a child prodigy, and Eri

James Dudfield Rose graduated MB BS from the medical school in Newcastle (then part of Durham University) in 1930 and went to Germany in 1936 to study gastroscopy, returning with a permanent impression of the rise of Nazism. Commissioned in the Royal Army Medical Corps, he was evacuated from Dunkirk

Born on 20 July 1907, William Henry Graham Jessop was educated at Almondsbury Grammar School, Huddersfield, and King's College, Cambridge, where he gained his BA in Natural Sciences in 1928. He did his clinical studies at University College Hospital, graduating MRCS LRCP in 1931, and later the Cambr

Born in 1910, Francis Rundle was educated in Newcastle and graduated from Sydney University Medical School with first class honours and the University Medal in 1932. During his early training in the competitive environment of the university hospitals in London, he won the Jacksonian Prize of the Col

George Clayfield Sawyer was born on 14 August 1909 in Portsmouth where his father was a sports journalist, later becoming Clerk to the local Medical Committee before the introduction of the NHS. He was educated at Portsmouth Grammar School and Guy's Hospital. Deciding on a career in surgery he held

Henry Shucksmith was the third child of Thomas Warth Shucksmith, a farmer of Alvington, Lincolnshire, and his wife Fanny White, whose father was a blacksmith. He was educated at the Alvington and North Coederington Church of England Elementary School followed by the King Edward VI Grammar School, Lo

Doris O'Doherty was born on 7 April 1902, the elder of two daughters of Charles Patrick O'Doherty, the assistant secretary of the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, and of Blanche Mary Clark. After education at the Mary Thatcher Girls' School in Camberwell she secured a St Dunstan's S

Popatlal Premchand Sheth was living in Ahmedabad, India, at the time of his death which, according to his son K P Sheth, took place sometime in 1978 or 1979.

Philip Ghey was born of a Quaker background in Plymouth in 1909, and was educated at Kelly College in Tavistock, Devon, and St John's College, Cambridge. He completed his medical education at St Bartholomew's Hospital, where he qualified in 1933, but he had already passed his Primary FRCS as a third

Iain Matheson was one of those unsung heroes who throughout the war and the worst of the bombing kept the civilian services going with very little assistance in the poorest parts of London. He was born on 18 November 1906 in Blackheath, South London, where his father John was a general practitioner,

Bob Wolfe was born in London on 10 October 1907. He came from Eastbourne College to St Thomas's where he qualified in 1932 and where, inspired by his teachers Cyril Nitch and Phillip Mitchiner, he decided on a career of surgery, rather against his father's hopes that they would join in general pract

After taking the Fellowship in 1935, Chatterjee returned to practise in India, where he died early in 1972.