Julian Taylor

Who was Julian Taylor?

Professor Julian Taylor, C.B.E., M.S., F.R.C.S., Hon.F.R.A.C.S. was a specialist in neurological surgery, Senior Surgeon at University College Hospital, a former Vice-President of the Royal College of Surgeons and later Professor of Surgery at the University of Khartoum.

Born in St. John's Wood, London, his father was the artist Edward Ingram Taylor and his mother, Margaret Boole, came from a family of mathematicians. His brother was the physicist Sir Geoffrey Ingram Taylor OM. Educated at University College School and University College Hospital, he qualified in 1911, an immediate disciple of Wilfred Trotter, one of the pioneers in neurosurgery, graduated M.B.,B.S., with honours in medicine in the following year and took the F.R.C.S. in 1914.

At a time when his contemporaries in other military areas were becoming major generals and achieving knighthoods, Taylor was a prisoner of war in Changi Prison camp, struggling with unspeakable conditions and lack of antiseptics and anaesthetics, with 2,500 wounded soldiers, 500 compound fractures, septicaemia, dysentery, avitaminosis, making artificial limbs out of aluminium fan blades and Thomas knee-splints.