Ranjit Basu was born on 15 August 1926 and studied for his MB BS at Grant Medical College in Bombay. He became a Fellow of the College in 1957 and came to England to live in Liverpool. He became surgical registrar at Alder Hey Children's Hospital and then senior registrar at the Liverpool Thoraci

Herbert Kitchener Bourns was born in County Galway on 14 July 1916, the sixth of seven children of Harry J Bourns, a farmer and landowner, and his wife Esther Josephine, née Cornwall. His early education was at St Columba's College near Dublin, after which he entered Trinity College Dublin for his m

Joe Jaya-Ratnam was born in Ceylon on 17 December 1936. He trained in Colombo, where he practised for 15 years before going to England to train in surgery. He specialised in accident and emergency medicine, was a registrar in Lincoln and Leicester, and a senior registrar in Middlesborough, before be

Olney, who was born in 1950, received his medical education at Westminster Hospital, qualifying with the conjoint diploma and the London MB BS in 1973. After a year working in various surgical specialties in Australia, he completed his training in Yorkshire. He was tutor in accident and plastic surg

John Fulford was the former director of Birmingham General Hospital's accident and emergency department and a consultant surgeon. He was born in Birmingham in 1919 and entered the medical school there in 1937. He had a most distinguished undergraduate career and qualified in 1942, after passing seve

Abani Kumar Chowdhury passed his MB in Calcutta in 1946 and his FRCS in 1958. He came to England and became a surgical registrar to the Walsall Hospital Group. In the 1960s he became senior casualty officer (and later consultant) to the accident and emergency department of Doncaster Royal Infirmary.

Howard Davies qualified in 1960 and worked first in Newport, and then as consultant to the accident and emergency department at Carmarthen, where he is thought to have worked for 15 to 20 years. After his wife died prematurely of breast cancer, he became rather a recluse and the College has little i

John Myers was a consultant surgeon in the accident and emergency department at Newham General Hospital in the East End of London. He qualified from St Mary's in 1968, where he did junior posts before passing the FRCS. He went on to be a casualty officer at St Thomas's Hospital, London, then a regis

Denley Clark was a consultant surgeon at Pinderfields Hospital and Pontefract General Infirmary. He was born in Thailand (then Siam) on 12 August 1908. His father, Percy Leonard Archibald Clark, was a missionary, as was his mother, Mary Lenore née Denley. He was educated in Thailand until the age of

Reg Jones, 'Jones the Bones' to his friends and colleagues, was a consultant orthopaedic and accident surgeon in the south east Kent, Canterbury and Thanet area. He was born in Southport on 5 October 1939, the son of Eric Lloyd, a transport manager, and Royal Audrey Joan Lloyd née Johnstone-Brown, a

Major General Norman Rogers was the director of Army surgery, and during his career encouraged the training of Army surgeons and the study of military wounding at the research establishment at Porton Down. He was born on 14 October 1916 in Long Acre, central London, the only child of Charles William

Albert Patrick ('Paddy') Dignan was a former director of Army surgery. He was a remarkable character who was born into a modest family in Dublin. His father, Joseph, a tailor, was able to get all five of his sons through medical school. (Whether an ability to stitch can be inherited remains open to