Stanley Willson Holmes was born in Reading on 1 October 1906, the son of Arthur Perceval Holmes, a company director and Emily Mabel Mills, sister of Bertram Mills the circus proprietor. His early education was at Hendon Preparatory School and University College School, Hampstead, after which he ente

Born in Bromley, Kent on 12 May 1905, Gaffer, as he was always known, was educated at Brighton College and St Thomas's Hospital where he was to spend most of his professional life. The second son of a solicitor, perhaps the immense attention to detail which characterised his work was due to his earl

James Dudfield Rose graduated MB BS from the medical school in Newcastle (then part of Durham University) in 1930 and went to Germany in 1936 to study gastroscopy, returning with a permanent impression of the rise of Nazism. Commissioned in the Royal Army Medical Corps, he was evacuated from Dunkirk

Desmond Kyran Mulvany was born in Portsmouth on 8 July 1907, the son of Dr John Mulvany, a general practitioner and an alderman of the City of Portsmouth, and his wife Eileen. His early education was at St John's College, Southsea, and St George's College, Weybridge, before entering King's College H

Iain Matheson was one of those unsung heroes who throughout the war and the worst of the bombing kept the civilian services going with very little assistance in the poorest parts of London. He was born on 18 November 1906 in Blackheath, South London, where his father John was a general practitioner,

Hal Morton was born on 18 August 1905 in Port Greville, Nova Scotia, Canada, the son of Charles S Morton, a physician in Halifax, and Marie née Stafford. He was educated at St Andrews College, Toronto, and then Dalhousie University, where he became a member of the Phi Rho Sigma Fraternity of Canada.

Wimberger was born in England in 1907 and graduated at the University of Birmingham in 1930. After holding various house appointments, he was Medical Superintendent for twenty years, 1937-57, and senior surgeon to Hallam Hospital, West Bromwich. His services during this period of heavy air raids in

Maurice Alexander Robertson was born in Aberdeen in 1906, and was educated at Sedburgh School and St John's College, Cambridge. He came to the London Hospital for the clinical course and qualified with the Conjoint Diploma in 1930, and also graduated MB BCh. After holding the usual junior hospital p

Kenneth Mackenzie MacLeod graduated BA Columbia University, New York, in 1926, and then studied at Cornell where he obtained the MD degree in 1929. He continued post-graduate study in Edinburgh, and at the Middlesex Hospital and passed the Conjoint Diploma examination in 1930. He was senior house-su

John Charles Leedham-Green was born in Birmingham on 30 October 1902, eldest son of Charles Albert Leedham-Green FRCS (1867-1931), sometime Professor of Surgery at Birmingham University, and his wife, Ethel, née Lees. He was educated at Rugby School and Balliol College, Oxford, where he read chemist

Anthony Harvard Baker was born at North Walsham, Norfolk, the eldest son of the Reverend Anthony Charles Baker a Methodist minister; his second name recalled a distant relationship to John Harvard who had bequeathed his library to Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the eighteenth century and had given his

Alphonsus d'Abreu, 'Pon' to his many friends, was the younger son of a Birmingham general practitioner and was born on 5 April 1906. He was educated at Stonyhurst College and at Birmingham University. Following graduation in 1930 and resident and registrar appointments in Birmingham he became a lect