John Charles Leedham-Green was born in Birmingham on 30 October 1902, eldest son of Charles Albert Leedham-Green FRCS (1867-1931), sometime Professor of Surgery at Birmingham University, and his wife, Ethel, née Lees. He was educated at Rugby School and Balliol College, Oxford, where he read chemist

Maurice Ellis, the son of a motor engineer, who founded a milk business which later became Associated Dairies, was born on 16 September 1905 in Leeds and was educated at Rydal School, Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and Leeds University School of Medicine. After qualifying in 1930 he was appointed to h

Anthony Harvard Baker was born at North Walsham, Norfolk, the eldest son of the Reverend Anthony Charles Baker a Methodist minister; his second name recalled a distant relationship to John Harvard who had bequeathed his library to Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the eighteenth century and had given his

James Reid was born in Bournemouth on 24 October 1906, the son of George Alexander Reid, a general practitioner, and his wife Muriel, née Hopwood. He was educated at Hailey Preparatory School in Bournemouth, and Marlborough College, Wiltshire. He then went to Oxford University and on to St George's

Allen James Whitaker, the fifth son of Dr James Smith Whitaker who was formerly a family doctor in Great Yarmouth, was born in Hendon on 16 April 1905. His father, having been the first medical secretary of the British Medical Association, became senior medical officer at the Ministry of Health on i