Born on 18 October 1899 at Dalmuir, near Glasgow into a seafaring family, Robert Scarff moved to London at the age of six when his father obtained a post ashore at Tilbury. Robert was educated at the City of London School and the Middlesex Hospital and he qualified with the Conjoint Diploma in 1924,

'Tim' Merrington was an accomplished surgeon whose career was blighted but whose spirit was undimmed by multiple sclerosis. Within four years of becoming consultant surgeon to University College Hospital, an appointment for which his earlier achievements had long marked him out, he developed the fir

Born on 22 December 1902 at Dunedin, New Zealand the son of J J Read, he entered the medical school of Otago University in 1920, qualifying in 1924 with the medal in clinical medicine. After holding resident appointments at Dunedin Hospital, he came to England for postgraduate study in obstetrics an

Born at Weybridge on 15 May 1862, third son of Arthur Cobbett, provision merchant, and his wife Betsey Holt, and their ninth and youngest child. He was educated at Lancing and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took third-class honours in the Natural Sciences tripos part I, 1884, and came under th

The fourth son of the Rev L Borrett Powell White, DD, Canon and Prebendary of St Paul's and Rector of St Mary Aldermary in the City of London, was born 21 April 1867. He entered St Paul's School in 1878 and left in July 1886, being then in Math VIII and having been elected a foundationer in 1879. He

Somewhat above middle height, clean-shaven with prematurely white hair and of ascetic appearance, Cecil Beadles was unmarried and lived for his garden and the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons. He was so excessively shy that he was rarely seen even by his colleagues unless they went

Cuthbert Dukes, the son of a Congregational minister, was born on 24 July 1890 at Bridgwater, Somerset. He was educated at Caterham School and the University of Edinburgh and graduated in 1914. He served in the RAMC throughout the first world war attached to the Rifle Brigade, and was awarded the OB

William St Clair Symmers held the Chair of Pathology at Charing Cross. He was born on 16 August 1917 in Belfast, where his father, William St Clair Symmers, an American who had been born in South Carolina and trained at the University of Aberdeen, was Professor of Pathology and Bacteriology, having

John Spencer-Bernard was born on 26 May 1907 in Ootacamund, India, the elder son of Sir Charles and Lady Edith Spencer. His father was ICS Puisne Judge of High Court of Judicature, Madras, while his uncle A J Spencer was editor of the standard textbook *Landlord and tenant*. It was in 1955 in relati

Educated at St John's College, Cambridge, and at Addenbrooke's and St Thomas's Hospitals. He graduated BA at Cambridge after he had been placed in the second class of the Natural Sciences Tripos in 1872, and then entered St Thomas's Hospital, where he acted as resident accoucheur and house physician

Sir Roddy MacSween, professor of pathology at the University of Glasgow, was unquestionably one of Scotland’s most distinguished medical practitioners of his time. He was, as the popular press once put it, ‘top doc’, a man with a huge range of interests, both within and outside the sphere of medicin

Rupert Allan Willis, the elder of two sons of Benjamin James Willis, a banker, was born on 24 December 1898 at Yarram, Victoria, Australia. His mother, Mary Elizabeth Giles (née James), was the daughter of a congregational minister, and his younger brother, James Hamlyn Willis, was a well-known bota