William (Bill) Coupland was born in Manilla, the son of William James Coupland, a businessman, and his wife Vida Amy (nee Blunt.) The first of his Coupland ancestors to come to Australia arrived in 1859, from England and were involved in gold mining east of Tamworth.

In 1961, Bill married (Elizabeth) Anne Korff, a nurse, the daughter of William and Marjorie Korff, graziers near Coonamble, at St James Church, Turramurra, New South Wales. They had four children: Brett, Sarah (Professor of Pathology at the University of Liverpool, UK), Lucy (PhD in Medical Science, the Australian National University) and Frances, and there are eight grandchildren.

Bill was the youngest of four children and attended Manilla Primary School in Manilla, and Tamworth High School. He graduated in medicine from the University of Sydney in 1959, with an outstanding academic record. He was first in final year, gaining First Class Honours, the University Medal and four separate prizes; the Arthur Edward Mills Graduation Prize for Distinction over the whole course, the RJ Ritchie Memorial Prize for Clinical Medicine, the Clayton Memorial Prize for Medicine and Clinical Medicine and the Robert Scott Skirving Memorial Prize for Medicine and Surgery.

In 1962, he was appointed to the Professorial Unit of the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, and became a Member of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. From 1963 to 1964, he was Senior Fellow in Haematology at Prince Henry Hospital in Sydney, and then was appointed Junior Physician, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. He declined that appointment, which would most likely have resulted in his eventually becoming one of the senior Physicians there. Instead, he chose to go to Canberra.

Bill commenced work in Canberra in 1964, taking the place of Dr Tony Proust and sharing a suite in the MLC Building, Civic, with Doctors Jim McCracken and Peter Blaxland. He worked as a general physician, as all Canberra physicians did at that time. However, with his special training in haematology, that part of his practice expanded rapidly and there was a natural progression into the field of oncology.

He appreciated the responsibility of the Canberra specialists to service the surrounding areas, visiting Cooma once per week for many years and, in his later years of practice, Moruya on the South Coast every three weeks, consulting and supervising chemotherapy as part of the outreach initiative of the Department of Oncology.

The Woden Valley Hospital, now The Canberra Hospital, had opened in 1973, however there was a reluctance on the part of the visiting medical staff to transfer their entire hospital practice from the Royal Canberra Hospital, where they had all been very happy, to Woden. It was Bill who took the initiative and persuaded three of the physicians, Colin Andrews, Robert Mitchell, and myself to join him in having our inpatients at Woden only. This was an important initiative for Woden and for the development of medicine in Canberra. It is an example of Bill's persuasiveness, the outcome of the fact that he liked people and therefore they tended to like him. Bill was instrumental in the development of the Department of Oncology which has serviced Canberra and the surrounding regions from that hospital.

His work on medical committees included serving as President of the Canberra Medical Society from 1979 to 1980. He was Chairman of the following: Royal Australasian College of Physicians ACT Branch 1979 and 1980, the Ethics Committee of the Capital Territory Health Commission from 1982 to 1985, the Division of Medicine of the Royal Canberra and Woden Valley Hospitals 1986. He was a Member of the Court of Clinical Examiners of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians from 1984 to 1986.

The tutoring and mentoring of medical students and junior doctors was one of his particular interests, and many general practitioners and specialists now practising in Canberra owe a great deal to him. Paul Craft, the present Director of the Oncology Department, was one of his registrars, as was his general practitioner, Stan Doumani. Bill was diagnosed with carcinoma of the prostate and bone metastases in 1998. His disease was managed by Doctors Paul Craft, Ken Sunderland and Stan Doumani.

The above activities might appear to leave no time for anything else, however he was heavily involved in other Canberra activities. He served on the committees of the Commonwealth Club, the Royal Canberra Golf Club and the Lords Taverners. He was also a keen tennis player.

Bill was a man of great intellectual capacity and accomplishments. These did not in any way diminish his gifts of empathy, sympathy and human understanding so important for all doctors, particularly those dealing with carcinoma and related illnesses. He was always modest, and I would think that the accomplishments listed above would only be known to a minority of the Canberra medical population, even those who worked with him for years.