Wallace Black was born at 14 Park View Road, Finchley on 12 September 1917; his father, James Black was a company director and his mother was Jane Duckworth, whose father was an electrical engineer. Black was educated at Finchley County School and at King's College London, and Westminster Hospital M

William Alexander Duncan Drummond was born in Cape Town on 16 September 1901 where his father was then working for the Anglo-American Tobacco Company. The family later returned to England. Having initially studied engineering and lost two fingers of his left hand in an accident at the Liverpool ship