Derek Reginald Gander was born in Shanghai, China. He attended the Cathedral School in the city and was interned as a teenager—along with much of his family—in various Japanese camps in the Shanghai area between 1942 and 1945. The experience had a profound impact on the boy and the man.
After Japan’s surrender, he relocated to the UK, where he attended Worcester Grammar School. He then trained at Middlesex Hospital Medical School, University of London and won the Inorganic Chemistry prize and Walter Butcher prize. He started his training in 1947, that auspicious year for the NHS.
In fact, the part of his training that seemed to leave the deepest impression …