Hector John Anderson was physician in charge of the thoracic department at St Thomas’ Hospital, London. He was born in Bilaspur, India, the son of Herbert John Anderson, a civil engineer, and Elaine Muriel née Plunkett, the daughter of Arthur James O’Leary Plunkett, superintendent of police for the Nizams, the hereditary rulers of Hyderabad.

Hector was educated at Exeter School, Cambridge, and then St Thomas’s Hospital. He held house physician posts at Lambeth Hospital, St Thomas’ and the Royal Surrey County Hospital, Guildford. He went on to hold registrar and resident assistant physicians posts at St Thomas’s throughout the first few years of the Second World War.

From 1943 to 1947, he served in the RAMC, as a lieutenant colonel. Following demobilisation, he returned to St Thomas’. He was an examiner for the University of London and the RCP, and gave the Goulstonian Lecture in 1951.

In 1940 he married Frances Pearce Putt, the daughter of William Pearce Putt, a Church of England clergyman. The married was dissolved in 1956. They had a son and a daughter.

RCP editor

[GKT gazette October 2002, p.514]