Prince Selvadurai Selvachandran was head of surgery at the Green Memorial Hospital in Manipay, Jaffna, Sri Lanka, until it was virtually destroyed in the civil war. He was born on 4 January 1938, the son of S S Selvadurai, principal of the American Mission College, Udupiddy, treasurer of the Jaffna

George Brian Rawsthorne was a consultant surgeon at Leighton Hospital, Crewe. He was born on 5 May 1937 in Liverpool, the second of the four children of Joseph Lewis Rawsthorne, a master builder, and Caroline Dorothy Ball, a physiotherapist. He was educated at Huyton Hill Preparatory School, Winderm

Shashikant Chaturbhai Patel – usually known as Sashi – was born on 18 March 1939 in Eldoret, Kenya. His father was Chaturbhai Patel, headmaster of a primary school and his mother’s maiden name was Maniben. He attended Allidina Visram High School in Mombasa before moving to the UK at the age of 16 an

Pradip Basu was a urological and general surgeon in Lincoln. He was born on 4 January 1942 into a medical family in Calcutta, India, the sixth child of Bibhuti Bhusan and Durga Rani Basu née Sinha. His grandfather and father qualified in Calcutta; his father became chief medical officer to the east

Abdool Rahim Moossa, known as 'Babs', was chairman of the department of surgery at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He called his approach the 'triple threat', combining first rate surgery with advanced education, training and research, not surprisingly taking USCD onto the internatio