Ken Shuttleworth helped establish the urology department at St Thomas' Hospital, London. He was born on 30 April 1922 in Bradford to Frederick and Edith Shuttleworth. His father won a scholarship to Oxford from Bradford Grammar School to read mathematics: his mother was at Girton College, Cambridge.

Irvine Smith was a consultant surgeon to Burton-on-Trent General Hospital. He was born in Ilkley on 5 December 1919. His father, Fredric Battinson Smith, was a forensic pathologist who had won the Military Cross in the first world war and later advised the Ministry of Health on setting up a national