Educated at Cambridge and St George's Hospital he qualified in 1938; intending to specialise as an orthopaedic surgeon, he served as house surgeon at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital, Oswestry. During the war he served in the RAF medical service as an orthopaedic specialist with

Graduating in engineering at London University in 1933, he later entered the medical school of the Middlesex Hospital, qualifying in 1938. He held a house surgeon's appointment at the West London Hospital and then became resident medical officer at the Radium Institute in 1931. In 1939 he joined the