Iven Alastair Page was born at South Grafton, New South Wales, in 1914, being the third son of Sir Earle Page. He was educated at the Fort Street Boys' High School and the Sydney Church of England Grammar School, and then proceeded to the University of Sydney where he graduated in medicine in 1937.

Osler Dickinson, the first of nine children of a Canadian farmer, was born at Hope, Ontario, on 29 September, 1908. There are no physicians recorded in the previous family history so the parents' choice of first name for their oldest child was probably not in hopeful anticipation of his eventual pro