John Shipman was a consultant surgeon at the Lister Hospital in Stevenage. He was born in London on 20 September 1917. His father, Henry, was in business, his mother was Rachel née Harwich. He studied medicine at University College Hospital, where he qualified in 1941 and after junior posts joined t

Arsene Klidjian was born in Alexandria, Egypt, on 22 April 1918. His father, Karnig Klidjian, was a pharmacist and among those who had fled Armenia in the Turkish massacres. Arsene was educated at Victoria College. His elder brother was expected to help run the family business, but Arsene was sent t

Francis Tasker (‘Frank’) Wheeldon was a consultant orthopaedic surgeon in Plymouth. Born in north London on 1 August 1917, his father was permanent private secretary to Sir Thomas Lipton, the tea magnet. He was educated at Weston-super-Mare Grammar School and Westminster Hospital, qualifying in 1941

Hassan Agha Hashemian was a professor of surgery and head of the department of surgery at the Cancer Institute, Tehran. He was born in Kashan, Iran, on 14 April 1915, the son of Hossein Hashemian, a velvet merchant, and Nagar, a housewife. He was educated at Tehran Boys School, and then received a s

Anaesthesia was introduced into surgery in 1846 and for the first 100 years little progress was made. It remained essentially a craft learned by experience rather than a science. Full-time anaesthetists were rare, anaesthetics being administered by general practitioners or any hospital doctors. The