William John Gillespie

Bill was born in Stirling, Scotland, and attended George Watson’s College for Boys, Edinburgh. He studied medicine at Edinburgh University, qualifying in 1964. After working as a house physician at the Cumberland Infirmary in Carlisle and a house surgeon in the orthopaedic unit of the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, he spent 18 months as an assistant lecturer in pathology at the University of Edinburgh.

Bill undertook specialty training in orthopaedics in Edinburgh and was appointed as a registrar and lecturer in 1970. In 1973 he spent a year as an exchange tutor specialist at Middlemore Hospital, Auckland, accompanied by his family—the first of many moves around the world. In 1974 …