Kenneth Geoffrey Wormsley

Kenneth Geoffrey Wormsley (“Ken”) was born in Bielefeld, Westphalia. When he was 9 years old, his family emigrated to England. He was educated at Leighton Park School in Reading, a public school with a reputation for academic excellence that had been founded by Quakers in 1890.

In 1945 he obtained a place at Guy’s Hospital Medical School, London, where he soon established himself as a talented medical student, winning the junior proficiency prize, the Sand-Cox prize in physiology, the Michael Harris prize in anatomy, and the Beaney prize in pathology. Three years later, he gained a BSc (Hons) in chemistry before qualifying in medicine.

After house jobs in Romford, Essex, and Enfield, Ken spent his two year period of national service in British military hospitals in Wuppertal, Hostert, and Münster, Germany.

On his return to England, in 1955, he was appointed a junior lecturer to Professor W R Spurrell at Guy’s, who was actively involved in the study of gastric …