Richard Lionel Spittel was born on 9 December 1881 in Tangalle, a town on the south coast of Ceylon, where his father Dr F G Spittel was stationed at that time as Government Medical Officer. He entered the Ceylon Medical College at the turn of the century, and qualified LMS Ceylon in 1905. He entere

Joseph Brownlee was of Irish descent; his father, J J Brownlee, who died in 1928, came from Northern Ireland and was one of the earliest doctors in Christchurch; his mother's maiden name was McKee. Brownlee received his early education at Waitaki Boys High School; he kept a great interest in his

Andrew McDowall was born at Bradford on 22 February 1901 of parents who had been born and brought up in Wigtownshire. He was educated first at Fort William School, where he developed a great interest in history. He went on to George Watson's College, Edinburgh, and then to Edinburgh University, wher

Jagan Nath Madan was born on 12 June 1896 in Sahowala, in the district of Sialkot. He was the second child of Karamchand Adan, a doctor. After school in Batalia he attended the Lahore Medical College in the Punjab where he won a silver medal in anatomy and graduated MB, BS in 1919. After an appointm

Rasamay Ganguly was born in Barisal, Bengal, on 1 May 1918. His father Heramba Chandra Ganguly was an excise officer in the Bengal Civil Service. His mother was Hemanginee Mukherjee, daughter of a deputy magistrate in the same service. The second son in a family of six children, he was educated at t

Ewen Murchison rose to be Surgeon Captain in the Royal Navy. On retirement he was civilian consultant surgeon to the Navy in Gibraltar. He was an associate member of the Association of Plastic Surgeons. He died in Gibraltar on 19 December 2002.

John Robey Cobbett was a consultant plastic surgeon at Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead, and Lewisham Hospital. He was born on 5 May 1930, the third son of Claude Racster Cobbett, a company director, and Constance Evelyn Anne Cobbett née Robey. From the age of four, following the death of his

David John Dyson Perrins was an expert in the use of hyperbaric oxygen and a former MRC research fellow at Churchill Hospital, Oxford. Born in 1924, he studied medicine at Jesus College, Cambridge, and rowed for the university in the 1946 Boat Race. He completed his clinical studies at St Thomas's,

Fiona Muir was a consultant orthopaedic hand surgeon at the Sussex Orthopaedic Treatment Centre. She was born on 9 August 1971 and studied medicine at Bristol University, qualifying in 1994. She gained her FRCS in 1998 and prior to her consultant appointment was a specialist registrar at the Quee