Donald Macleod Douglas was born on 28 June 1911 and educated at Madras College, University of St Andrew's, where he graduated MB ChB in 1934. He became Commonwealth fellow and fellow in surgery at the Mayo Clinic from 1937 to 1939 and was then appointed first assistant in surgery at the British Post

Fritz Linder was born in Breslau in 1912 where his father occupied the house of Miculicz. He started to study medicine there, and after four years came to England to do his fifth year in Bristol, returning to qualify and practise in Germany. Linder served in the German Medical Corps throughout the s

Tara Chandra was principal of the Kanpur Medical College, India. He was born on 25 August 1925, in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh state, and received his medical education at KG Medical College, Lucknow, gaining 16 medals and prizes, and coming first in the final MB BS. After junior posts in Lucknow,

Alexander Graham was born at Witbank, Transvaal, South Africa, on 15 February 1921. His father, Alexander Chimes Graham, was a mine manager. His mother, Mary Josephine McKenna, was the daughter of Joe McKenna, the mine captain who assisted Winston Churchill in his escape from the Transvaal during th

Harris B Shumacker was chairman of the department of surgery at Indiana University and a pioneer of cardiovascular surgery. He was born on 20 May 1908 in Laurel, Mississippi, the son of Harris Blumenthal Shumacker and Corinne Selma Shumacker née Teller. He attended the University of Tennessee at Cha

Adam Golebiowski was born in March 1914 to a Polish family which had been associated with the struggle for independence since Napoleonic times. He studied medicine at Lwow in the 1930s. He was mobilised at the outbreak of the second world war and taken prisoner by the Russians, undergoing very harsh