Eoin Aberdeen was born in Melbourne in 1924 and qualified in medicine there in 1948. Before coming to England in 1955 he was a medical and surgical registrar at the Royal Children's Hospital and a flying doctor in North-West Australia. After a spell in the burns unit at Birmingham he became surgical

James Keith Ross was a leading cardiac surgeon, and one of the team that performed the first cardiac transplant in Britain. He was born in London on 9 May 1927. His father, Sir James Paterson Ross, was later to become professor of surgery at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, Surgeon to the Royal Household