Dr Kurt Aaron was born in Hamburg in 1909 and died in Brisbane in 1986. After receiving his secondary schooling at the Helmholz Ober-Real Schule in Frankfurt, he attended universities in Munich and Cologne and graduated MD University of Frankfurt in 1935, completing his clinical undergraduate studies at the Städtischen Krankenhaus in Frankfurt. With his widowed mother, Kurt left Hitler's G...

Andrew Abbie was born in Kent, United Kingdom, of Scottish Huguenot descent, the son of the first engineer officer in the Royal Navy to be commissioned from below deck. When his father retired the family moved briefly to New Zealand, his mother's birthplace, and then to New South Wales where he attended the University of Sydney. Except for the first term, his entire course of studies was paid f...

Associate Professor George Abbott, who died after a short illness with lung cancer, was recognised on both sides of the Tasman as one of the most respected paediatricians of his generation.

George was born in Lahore and moved with his family to Christchurch after the partition of India. He graduated in medicine from the University of Otago in 1964 and gained MRACP in 1968 and FRACP in 19...

I graduated from QLD University in 1967 and began working at the RMO Princess Alexandra Hospital Brisbane from 1967-1968. I worked at the RMO Queen Hospital for Children between 1969-1970.

I moved to the UK in 1970 and received a Diploma in Child Health, then worked in both London and Birmingham as Medical registrar MRCP(UK) between 1970-1973. I returned to Australia in 1973 and beg...

Derek Abrahams was born at St Neots, Huntingdonshire, was educated at Bedford School and Caius College Cambridge and completed his medical studies at St George's Hospital London. He was born into a distinguished family, which no doubt influenced his future life. It is always difficult following in distinguished footsteps. His mother was killed in an accident when he was very young and his lawye...

Ellis Abrahams was born in Warrnambool, Victoria, in 1918. His father, William Francis Abrahams, was a schoolmaster and his mother was Annabel Clarinda, née Ellis. Ellis had three sisters. He married Mary Jean Hoy in London on 27 May 1947 while both were studying for their higher degrees. She eventually became a psychiatrist. There were four children of the marriage - Kelvin (engineer), ...

John Lewis Adams, son of Robert Tasman Adams, barrister and solicitor, and Hilda Mary (nee Cooper), registered nurse and hospital proprietor, was born at home in Pahiatua. He had four siblings.

He married Gwendoline Lucy Harkness, a nurse, and they had three children; John Dickson Adams, consultant dermatologist, Stephen Vaughan Adams, management consultant and Justin Mary McCarthy, shee...

Henry Cyril ('Bill') Adams served in the Australian Army Medical Corps during World War I from 1916 to 1918, with the rank of major. He was appointed honorary physician to Sydney Hospital in 1920 and remained in that post until he reached retiring age at the end of 1936 when he was made an honorary consultant physician. He was still in private practice as a consultant at 183 Macquarie Street w...

John Kellerman Adey, affectionately known as 'JK' was born at Taunton,Somerset, England, the son of Captain Charles Adey. Arriving in Australia when he was fourteen years old, he was educated at Melbourne Grammar School and proceeded to the University of Melbourne, graduating in medicine in 1909 at the early age of twenty-one.

From the outset, Adey was attracted to psychiatry and through...

Charles Adey entered the laboratories division of the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories at Point Pirie on 16 May 1927 as a medical officer. The appointment was confirmed in December 1927 (effective from 13 June 1927) and his duties were extended by his appointment as a quarantine officer at the same time. In 1930 he visited Fiji to assist the Fijian Government in the investigation and control of ...

John Agar was born in Glasgow, Scotland and came to Australia in 1920 when his father was appointed Professor of Zoology at the University of Melbourne. He was educated at Melbourne Grammar School and commenced a combined science and medical course at the University of Melbourne. He was a resident in Trinity College and in 1930 was a member of the University athletics and rugby teams and was aw...

Currently, I am Clinical Nephrologist at the University Hospital Geelong in Victoria. I am Conjoint Clinical Professor of Medicine at Deakin University and University Hospital Geelong, Geelong. I graduated with MBBS in 1970 from Monash University. I was Director of the Renal Unit at Geelong Hospital, Barwon Health from 1978 – 2011.

I established the first home nocturnal haemodialys...

The death of Sir Robert Aitken brought to a close the life of one of the College’s most distinguished Fellows and one of New Zealand’s greatest medical graduates.

Robert Aitken was born in Wyndham, Otago, where his father James Aitken was a Presbyterian Minister who later became Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in New Zealand. Robert’s mother was Mary Vasey n&eacut...

Melville Aiken was born in Palmerston North. His parents were Frederick Parkes Aiken, an accountant and his wife Grace Elizabeth née Morton. Melville was educated at Hamilton High School and Otago University, graduating in 1927. He was a house surgeon at Wellington Hospital 1927 to 1929 and had further post-graduate experience in London at the Greenwich Seamen’s Hospital 'Dreadnoug...

After an upbringing on a Central Otago sheep run, `Peter' Aitken, as his friends knew him, was educated at Otago Boys' High School and Otago University qualifying at the outbreak of the First World War. Almost immediately he enlisted and served with distinction in Egypt and at Gallipoli very soon after the landing until the evacuation. Thereafter he was in France with the New Zealand Division a...

Graham Aitken qualified at Otago on the eve of the Second World War, and served with the New Zealand forces in the Pacific. He was regarded as a brilliant student, though something of a loner and for some years it was not generally known which direction his career might follow. After the war he gained specialist qualification in surgery and in gynaecology, thereafter returning to Auckland whe...

John Akeroyd was born in Melbourne. The son of Joseph, school inspector (later inspector general of Penal Establishments), and Ethel Caroline Finch, school teacher. He was educated at Bendigo and Melbourne High School where he was an honours student. He graduated in medicine from the University of Melbourne with honours in obstetrics and surgery. During his university course he was actively inv...

Gordon Walker Fabian Alberry was born in November 1900 and graduated Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery from the University of Melbourne in 1931. After a residency at the Launceston General Hospital he was appointed as a flying doctor at Cloncurry which was the original Flying Doctor Base founded by John Flynn. He was at Cloncurry between 1935 and 1947 except for a brief period off wh...

Born in West Linton, Scotland, James Martin Alexander studied medicine at the University of Glasgow. After graduating in September 1941, he held house physician posts at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Glasgow and at EMS Hospital, Gleneagles, Perthshire until November 1942. After two months in general practice, he joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve as a surgeon lieutenant and was on...

John Murray Alexander was born in Sydney in 1913 and graduated in medicine from the University of Sydney in 1937.

He spent several years in residency at Sydney Hospital. He moved to Crown Street Obstetric Hospital then to the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children (RAHC) at Camperdown where his lifelong interest in pediatrics began.

During World War II, John Alexander served in the...

Donald Allan was born in Otago in 1907 of Scottish settler stock. His father, Joseph Allan, farmed on the Taieri Plains near Dunedin. His mother was Emily Salmond, a daughter of William Salmond who came from North Shields to lecture at the recently founded Presbyterian Theological College: subsequently he became professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy at Otago University. Donald’s father...

Stuart Douglas Allen was born in Sydney in February 1900. His father was William John Allen, horticulturist, and his mother Annie Douglas Robertson whose father William Whitehead Robertson was an importer. He was educated at Sydney Grammar School and graduated MB ChM from the University of Sydney in 1924. He was a student of Sydney Hospital.

Following qualification he obtained a post as ...

Born in Sydney in 1893, Ray Allen originally studied science at Sydney University but left in August 1914 to join the Army at the outbreak of war. He served as an officer in 30 Bn in the Middle East and later in France where he was mentioned in dispatches and received the Military Cross. Seriously wounded at the battle of the Somme, he was invalided home in August 1917 with a crippled right arm...

My association with Murree Allen began in 1949 in Newcastle when we were both in general practice and although in opposition, we established a bond of friendship until his untimely death at the age of forty-five. He represented the end of an era when general practice was the stepping stone to consultant practice as a physician.

He was the son of a doctor and his academic record was an en...

Ivan McDonald Allen was New Zealand's first neurologist. He was born the eldest of six children of William James Allen, a farmer, and Elizabeth Pollock in Onehunga, Auckland in 1895, received his secondary education at Auckland Grammar School and proceeded then as a national scholar first to university in Auckland then to medical school in the University of Otago. After graduating with an excel...

I trained in the United Kingdom and worked with Dr Tony Cull as he set up the neonatal intensive care and neonatal retrieval services for the Waikato, New Zealand region in 1977. In 1982, I moved to Thames in the Coromandel. I had local outpatient clinics in the small-town cottage hospitals and saw children at home and in school alongside the local Public Health Nurses.

In 1984, there wa...

John Henry (known as Jack) Alpers was born at Mannum South Australia. He was tall, slim, athletic and cheerful all his life. He died of leukemia at his home in Glen Osmond, South Australia. He received a Membership of the Order of Australia in 2002 in recognition of his contributions to teaching and clinical care in respiratory medicine and the Vice Chancellor's Award from Flinders University i...

I was born on 1 April 1930 and attended The Royal College, Colombo Sri Lanka. The school's motto was 'Disce Aut Discede' ('Learn or Depart'). I later completed my MBBS at the University of Ceylon in 1956. My career has spanned across Sri Lanka, Australia and New Zealand, with the latter the setting for a significant part of my career in Cardiology. I first posted as a Consultant Physician at th...

Stanley Turtle Anderson was born in Brighton-Le-Sands, Sydney, NSW. His parents had migrated from Northern Ireland. His father was John, a businessman in electrical goods and his mother was Joyce (nee Carson). Stanley was the second of six children.

Stan attended Canterbury Boys High School and following his matriculation was awarded a Commonwealth Scholarship. His father had wished him ...

Professor Emeritus Charlotte M Anderson was an international pioneer in the field of paediatric gastroenterology, which brought together her skills in science and medicine.

During her childhood she was fascinated by the workings of the body and wanted to become a doctor. However, after she completed high school in Melbourne, her father suggested she 'stay at home and help [her] mother'. ...

Phyllis Anderson, the only child of a respected general practitioner and his wife, was born in Sydney. After attending the Methodist Ladies' College, Burwood, she entered the faculty of medicine at the University of Sydney, graduating in 1925. She then worked at the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children, where she was trained in pathology by Dr Tidswell, himself an outstanding bacteriologist. A...

Kevin Anderson graduated in medicine from Guy's Hospital Medical School where he was awarded the Golding Bird scholarship and gold medal in bacteriology. After service with the RAF at the Institute of Pathology and Tropical Medicine, he held positions as senior lecturer in bacteriology at Guy's Hospital and then senior registrar in pathology at Saint Paul's Hospital in 1956-57.

He came t...

`Jock' Anderson was born in Urana, New South Wales, where his father was a general practitioner. He was educated at Longford Grammar School, Tasmania, and University of Melbourne where he rowed for Ormond College. After graduation he was a demonstrator in the University department of anatomy and in 1911 was appointed honorary outpatient physician at St Vincent's Hospital. He went into general p...

Alex Anderson was born in the Western District town of Warrnambool, Victoria, the younger son of LW and Mrs Anderson. The family moved to a property near Berwick, where Alex went to the local school, and then to Scotch College, Melbourne, for his secondary education, where he took the prize in British history and European history. In 1938 he went up to Ormond College, in the University of Melbo...

Bouverie Anderson Stuart, popularly known as 'Andy', was born in Sydney as one of twin boys but he had one older and one younger brother as well. He lived a long and interesting life until his death at 94 years. His father, Sir Thomas Peter Anderson Stuart, was a prominent figure in the medical world, being the founder of the University of Sydney medical school, appointed from Edinburgh in 1882...

Richard Roderick (Rod) Andrew was born in Perth Western Australia, son of Frank Carl Frederic Andrew, an otolaryngologoist, and Jemima Andrew nee Urquhart. He was educated at Geelong Grammar School and graduated in medicine from the University of Melbourne in 1935. During the following three years he held appointments at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and the Royal Children’ Hospital. He th...

I was born in Brighton, England 1927. I attended secondary schooling at Xaverian College Brighton to 1941. From there I was a cadet on the HMS 'Conway' 1942 to 1943 then deck officer British Merchant Navy late 1943 to 1948. I went onto Queen Mary College and the London Hospital, qualifying in 1955. I did house appointments mainly at the London until migration to Australia in early 1959 with my ...

Roger Angove was a member of the well-known South Australian winemaking family. His early childhood was quite disrupted. His father, Edward Laurence Angove, was sadly killed in action in France in August 1918 when Roger was only three years old. The grief of a young war widow (née Dorothy Clare) needs no emphasis, being left to care for two baby sons under four years of age. It was fortu...

The medical community was stunned and saddened by the untimely death of Dr Vince Antico on 19 October 1995 at the age of 44 years. Vince was the youngest of three brothers and proud of his Italian ancestry. He went to school at Waverley College in Sydney, graduated in Medicine from the University of NSW in 1974 and trained in Internal Medicine at the Prince of Wales Hospital from 1974 to 1978. ...

Peter Anyon was born in Wellington and educated at Wellington College before attending the Otago University Medical School where he completed the degree of B Med Sci during his undergraduate years. This was an indication of his life-long interest in medical research and his skeptical nature that always asked questions of accepted wisdom, whatever the field of endeavour.

After graduation ...

John Apthorp was born in Hamilton to Edward and Violet Apthorp. His father was Music Teacher at Southwell School. On 25 August 195,1 he married Phyllis Mary Willcocks, an English nurse who had emigrated to New Zealand. During the course of a 58 year marriage they had 6 children: Paul, Christopher, Timothy, Peter, Cathy (a nurse) and Ruth, together with 11 grandchildren and 4 great-grandchildren...

Mervyn Archdall was born in Balmain, NSW, in 1884, the son of an Irish father and a German mother. His father, the Reverend (later Canon) Mervyn Archdall, who came from the south of Ireland, was a Cambridge graduate and a Hebrew, Greek and Latin scholar. His mother, to whom he always referred as `my little mother', was the daughter of Pastor William Adolphe Karow, who served at a little place c...

Geoffrey Archibald was the only son of George and Margorie Archibald of Nelson. He was educated at Nelson College and Otago University. Following his graduation and two years as house surgeon at Christchurch Hospital he spent a further two years there as a registrar, first in medicine and then in dermatology.

He passed his MRACP in 1972 and travelled to England for further training in de...

Felix Wilfrid Arden was born on 20th April 1910, in Singapore, then a British Colony within the Straits Settlements. His father was Stanley Arden, a rubber planter and horticulturalist. Felix Arden's mother, Winifred Arden, was from a Quaker family and was a devout Christian throughout her life. Felix, a brilliant student, was sent as a boarder to St. Edward King and Martyr School in Oxford. It...

Roy Armati was born in Mackay in Queensland, one of two sons of Percy Armati who was a pharmacist in the town. Both sons became doctors.

He graduated in medicine from the University of Sydney in 1936 with first-class honours. During 1937 and 1938, he held residency positions at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. Pulmonary tuberculosis interrupted his training at RPAH, but he was able to retur...

Dr John Norman Armour was born in Invercargill, New Zealand, of Scottish ancestry on 3 November 1912. He attended Southland Boys' High School and did his medical training in Dunedin, qualifying MB ChB in 1939. He was a house-surgeon at Palmerston North Hospital during 1939 and 1940 where he met Grace Stanley, a fellow house-surgeon and they were married in 1940. In 1941, John entered the Army s...

Dengate Robert Armstrong died suddenly at his home at Whangarei Heads on 4 April 1986. Born into a family of English working class immigrants on 4 August 1920 in Drouin Victoria, he inherited the life-long pacifism of his father. He attended Palmerston North Primary and Boys' High, before entering Otago Medical School. His athletic skills led to a university blue in boxing and he was twice runn...

Barbara Arnold was born in Sydney in 1926, daughter of Roy Frederick Arnold, a dental surgeon, and Linda Gertrude (née Mocatta). I am indebted to her stepmother, Olive, for the following details. Her father was a mature age student who went to Sydney University after his first marriage. He graduated in dentistry and was recruited as an army dentist during World War II. He was granted com...

Dr Arnott was born in Wyalong New South Wales in 1902 and educated at Goulburn High School. He then attended the University of Sydney as a student of St Andrew's College. He graduated MB ChM in 1925. He represented Australia against New Zealand in hockey in 1923 and captained the University hockey team in 1924 thereby, obtaining his blue. He underwent his training in psychiatry at Callan Park H...

I helped Professor Jim Biggs develop the bone marrow transplant program at St Vincent's Hospital between 1981 and 1996. This was replete with both clinical tragedies and successes. The treatment-related mortality for HLA-identical sibling transplantation at that time was 30%. On the other hand, many people with diseases incurable by any other means such as those with chronic myeloid leukemia be...

Harold Attwood was a distinguished pathologist, teacher and medical historian whose leadership in the field of medical history was of special significance.

Harold Dallas Attwood was born in Scotland in 1928 and died in Melbourne on 8 June 2005. His son, Alan Attwood, wrote in his obituary of Harold's early life, published in The Age on 27 June 2005:

'Harold Attwood, who has died p...

Fuad Michael Audeau was born in Baghdad, Iraq. His father, Michael, a civil servant and his mother, Miriam (nee Hakim) had a total of seven children. He attended The Sacred Heart Primary School and then Baghdad College, a Jesuit High School. Qualifying in medicine from the University of Baghdad in 1957 he was a house officer in the Professorial Unit, Department of Medicine, at the Republic Hosp...