Charles Malcolm Phillips, the only son of Sir Charles Phillips, CBE, a company director, and of Sylvia Maud Phillips (née Schunke), was born at Nairobi, Kenya, on 5 July 1918. He was educated at St. Clare Preparatory School in Walmer, Kent, and at Sherborne School where he secured an Open Science Pr

Douglas Bennett was born on 18 July 1918, the son of Geoffrey Bennett, an officer in the North Somerset Yeomanry who subsequently took to ranching in Argentina and his wife Elizabeth Elsa Müller, who was Swiss. He was educated at Minehead Grammar School and at University College Hospital in London,

Ronald McGrigor was born in London on 1 January 1920, the son of Dalziel McGrigor and Dorothy Macgregor Drysdale. His father was a radiologist in the RAMC. He was educated at Stowe School and Trinity College Cambridge, where he passed the Natural Sciences Tripos in 1940 and then went to St Bartholom