Kandiah Vythilingham was born in Ceylon on 7 November 1910 and qualified with the LMS of Ceylon in 1937. He joined the Department of Health Services in 1939 and was appointed an acting medical officer at the Victoria Memorial Eye Hospital, Colombo. Thenceforward he specialized in ophthalmology, hold

Eric Meyer was born in London on 2 July 1918 the son of Reinhard Carl Johannes Meyer, an ophthalmic surgeon and Fellow of the College, who moved to South Africa in 1920, and his wife, Phyllis, née Bagshaw. He was at King Edward's School in Johannesburg before entering the University of Witwatersrand