A Brief History of Sir Hugh Cairns and His Helmet Creation

Lawrence of Arabia, Sir Hugh Cairns, and the origin of motorcycle helmets.

When Colonel T.E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia") was fatally injured in a motorcycle accident in May 1935, one of the several doctors attending him was a young neurosurgeon, Hugh Cairns. He was moved by the tragedy in a way that was to have far-reaching consequences. At the beginning of the Second World War, he highlighted the unnecessary loss of life among army motorcycle dispatch riders as a...

Re: Hugh Cairns and the origin of British neurosurgery.

Sir Hugh Cairns, the first Nuffield Professor of Surgery in Oxford and consultant neurosurgeon to the Royal Army Medical Corps during World War II, was a leader in helping to establish neurosurgery as a speciality in Britain. After learning the craft from Dr Harvey Cushing in Boston, Cairns fought against the general surgical orthodoxy in London to establish the first specialised neurosurgical ...

a brief history of zero

it is generally recognised that ‘zero’ as we understand the concept today originated in two geographically separated cultures: the maya and indian. however, if zero merely signified a magnitude or a direction separator (i.e. separating those above the zero level from those below the zero level), the egyptian zero, nfr, dating back at least four thousand years, amply served these purposes. if ze...

Honouring Sir Stewart and his Work.

Sir William Osler and his Welsh connections.

to Canada with his young bride, Ellen Free Pickton. She was a native of London, but bore a distinguished Welsh name. William was the youngest of their family of nine, and was born in the parsonage at Bond Head in Tecumseth County in the backwoods of Upper Canada. Uncle Edward was the eldest of the nine children of Grandfather Osler. He was a favourite uncle, of whom WO wrote 'we cherished an am...