Bruce Pearson was born in Cairns, Queensland, on 29 July 1926, the son of Dr Henry Roy Pearson, a general practitioner with a special interest in obstetrics, and Louisa Agnes Crum. He went to Armidale High School, Perth Modern School and Sydney University, where he represented his school and college

‘Kwashie’ Quartey had an international reputation for his work on the surgery of urethral stricture, and was one of the father figures of surgery in his home country, Ghana. He was the sixth of the seven children of Peter David Quartey snr, headmaster of the Government Junior School in James Town, a