Hedley Atkins

Sir Hedley John Barnard Atkins KBE FRCS (30 December 1905 – 26 November 1983) was the first professor of surgery at Guy's Hospital and President of the Royal College of Surgeons.

[1] He was the son of Guy's Hospital physician Sir John Atkins and Elizabeth May (née Smith) and was educated at Rugby School and Trinity College, Oxford.

He gained a physiology degree at Oxford and in 1937 was appointed to the staff of Guy's as assistant surgeon, spending all his professional life in that institution.

In 1942, during World War II, he went to North Africa with the Royal Army Medical Corps, subsequently served in Italy and the UK, was mentioned in despatches and demobilised with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.

In 1959 he edited Tools of Biological Research and in 1977, wrote Memoirs of a Surgeon He and his wife moved into Down House in Downe, Kent in 1962 to be honorary curator of the Charles Darwin museum there.