Archibald Louis Percy Jeffery was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and St Thomas's Hospital, where he won the Beaney Scholarship in surgery and pathology in 1924. After qualifying both with the Conjoint Diploma and the London MB, BS, he obtained the Fellowship of the College and the MS in 1926,

George Pitt was born in Marylebone, London, on 17 July 1898, the third child and elder son of George Newton Pitt, MD, FRCP, and Jane Elizabeth Heriot, a banker's daughter. After education at Leas Court, Folkestone, and Highgate School he served as a Lieutenant in the Royal Artillery from 1916 to 191

Gerard Giles Penman was educated at Sherborne School, Pembroke College, Cambridge, and St Thomas's Hospital, London. During the first world war he served in the Royal Field Artillery, 1917-19. After qualifying in medicine and passing through training appointments in ophthalmology, he was soon appoin

Nehemiah Asherson was born in South Africa in 1897, the son of Isaac Asherson and was educated initially at the University of Cape Town before coming to England in 1919, entering University College Hospital Medical School and qualifying in 1923 after gaining the Liston and Bruce Medal. He undertook

Charles Athelstane Lupton was born on 17 April 1897. His great-grandfather was Thomas Michael Greenhow of Newcastle-upon-Tyne who was one of the first to excise a carious os calcis and one of the original 300 Fellows of the Royal College of Surgeons. He was educated at Wellington College. After trai

Victor Wilkinson Dix was born in Dorset on 24 May 1899 and educated privately. He served in the Royal Flying Corps from 1917 to 1919, then went up to Cambridge to study medicine there and at the London Hospital. He was appointed assistant surgeon to the London in 1930 and eventually became Professor

Lewis Herbert Savin was born in London on 26 March 1901. His parents were missionaries who had fled from China at the time of the Boxer rebellion a few months before his birth. Shortly after, his father and mother returned to the hospital that his father had founded at Chao Tung in Yunnan. He used t

Bryan Hartop Burns was born on 14 December 1896, at Higham Park, Rushden, Northants. He was the elder of the two sons of Hartop Burns, farmer, and Florence Ann, née Fuller. Both parents came from farming and landowning families in Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire. He was educated first at Kimbolt