Barrie Russell Jones was professor of clinical ophthalmology at the University of London. He was born at Silverstream, near Wellington, New Zealand, on 4 January 1921. He obtained a degree in natural sciences from Victoria University, Wellington, before studying medicine at the University of Otago,

John Romano was born on 24 May 1926 into a Jewish-Italian family in Cairo, where he was educated and subsequently qualified in medicine. His father Albert Romano was a barrister and his mother was Marie Afif. In Cairo he became fluent in English, French, Italian and Arabic, skills that he later used

John Moss was a former ophthalmic surgeon at Stoke Mandeville. He was born in Birmingham in 1922 and attended Bishop Vesey School, Sutton Coldfield. At Birmingham University Medical School during the war, he was of the generation of students who regularly did fireguard duties and worked as house sur