[1] Born in 1934, Owen's childhood was overshadowed by medical problems, beginning when he underwent radiation therapy to treat a tumour on his leg, which weakened his bones causing them to break when he was aged 11.
[3] During the 1960s, Owen worked in London as a senior registrar at the Great Ormond Street Hospital, during which time he also obtained additional medical degrees and began research into microsurgery.
[3] Upon returning to Australia in 1970, Owen commenced working at the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children, where he made the first of many significant breakthroughs when he successfully reattached a young boy's severed finger.
[5] Owen continued to develop his microsurgical skills, being the first surgeon to perform vasectomy reversals and complete fallopian tubal ligations.
The man had previously had both arms amputated below the elbows following an accident involving an amateur rocket which had exploded causing severe injuries.
The surgeons had a four month-wait for a reasonably matched face from a donor with a similar age, the same blood group, tissue type and skin colour.
Upon a match being found, Owen was unable to arrive in France in time for the operation, having decided it would be disrespectful to keep the brain-dead donor on life support while he made the journey from Australia.
[16][2] In 1985, he and Melbourne plastic surgeon Hunter Fry wrote a paper on how many classical musicians suffer from repetitive strain injury, requiring them to either take time off or stop playing completely.
[19] Owen was depicted as one of the surgeons in Henry Ward’s painting The finger-assisted nephrectomy, unveiled in 2010 and exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery, London.