Frank William Law was born in Isleworth, London, on 14 August 1898, the third son of Thomas Law, a drapery warehouseman, and his wife Emma, née MacRae. He was educated at St Paul's School and St John's College, Cambridge, proceeding to the Middlesex Hospital for his clinical studies where he graduat

Consultant ophthalmic surgeon to University College Hospital and Moorfields Eye Hospital, Cyril Dee Shapland distinguished his career in the 1950s by pioneering new procedures using diathermy and cryosurgery in the treatment of detachment of the retina. Years earlier, in 1929 he assisted Sir William