John Ernest Michael Whitehead

The only son of Charles Whitehead, a general practitioner, Michael attended Merchant Taylors' School, and then followed his father's footsteps to Caius and St Thomas's. As a junior doctor, he met Betty, a Nightingale nurse, whom he married in 1946. They had two children, Stephen and Anne, both of whom are doctors.

After junior posts in bacteriology at St Thomas' and a British postgraduate travelling fellowship spent …