Roderick Paton was born on 14 September 1908 in Streatham where his father was a general practitioner, and was educated at Streatham College, Dulwich College and St Thomas's Hospital Medical School, and qualified in 1931. Nine years later, after various hospital appointments, he obtained his Fell

Lewis Philip Jameson Evans was born at Edgbaston, Birmingham on 2 June 1907, the son of John Jameson Evans, FRCS, a distinguished ophthalmic surgeon and lecturer in ophthalmology in Birmingham University; his mother was a daughter of the Rev Thomas Charles Edwards DD, first Principal of the Universi