Tim Bayliss-Smith was born in Brighton, England in 1947. He was educated at Brighton College before going on to university at Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge. He served on the Volunteer Service Overseas (VSO) program in Honiara, Solomon Islands, 1965-1966. He worked as a teacher in the Survey Drafting School in the Lands Department of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate Government and as a librarian in the Geological Survey Department.

Tim has made a number of subsequent visits to Solomon Islands. In 1971, he spent 11 months on Ontong Java atoll for his PhD fieldwork and returned to Ontong Java in 1972, with the Harvard Biomedical Expedition. Tim joined the Department of Geography at University of Cambridge in 1973 where he has continued his research in the area of land management in the humid tropics, with a particular focus on Melanesia. Throughout his career, Tim has undertaken research in human ecology, population changes and the prehistoric ecology of various environments in Melanesia. He has returned to Solomon Islands on various research teams, carrying out fieldwork in Marovo Lagoon and Mase Crater, New Georgia. He has also carried out research in northern Sweden, Malaysia and Costa Rica.

Tim continues to serve as Emeritus Professor of Pacific Geography, and Fellow of St. John's College, University of Cambridge.

Frank Menzies Cameron Forster was born in Sydney, NSW, on 21 September 1923. He moved to Melbourne with his mother, Jean Catherine Forster, a psychology graduate and later pioneering remedial teacher, and attended Princes Hill Primary School then Melbourne Grammar. In 1940 Frank went to the University of Melbourne to study medicine. While there, he underwent surgery for a tumour on his spine which left him with “spinal weakness and intermittent pain.” He graduated with a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) in 1948 with honours in surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology.

At the end of the following year, Frank spent the four months December 1949-March 1950 in the Australian Territory of Papua and New Guinea. Post World War 2, Australian health and medical professionals went to work there, but Frank did not stay there or return later as far as is known. He did keep a small collection of black and white photographs he took at the time which show that he visited Samarai, Lae, Goroka, Madang and Manus, travelling by boat and plane.

By 1951 he was a resident doctor at the Royal Women’s Hospital (RWH) in Melbourne. In 1952 he married Prudence Isobel Swan Edgar, a nurse, and in 1953 they travelled together to London where Forster worked at the Hospital for Women and gained membership of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

The Forsters returned by 1954 to Melbourne where Frank worked again at the RWH. He became known for his bedside teaching and lively lectures, emphasising the need for care of pregnant women, and became a specialist in dealing with difficult pregnancies. In 1967, he gave the inaugural annual Tracy Maund Memorial lecture, honouring the memory of the two founders of the RWH. Not only was Frank Forster a practitioner with a flair for teaching and public speaking, he was also a collector of medical books, pamphlets and instruments, a researcher, archivist and writer of works related to medical matters, and an active member and financial supporter of several organisations such as the Medical History Museum and the medical professional body known as the Royal Australian College of Gynaecologists (RACOG) and later as RANZCOG when the Australian and New Zealand bodies amalgamated. Frank donated to RACOG’s library his collections of items relating to women’s health in 1987. The College renamed their library the Frank Forster Library in his honour when Frank died on 18 March 1995 age 71. Frank was survived by his wife, a daughter and three sons.

More information about Frank Forster is online at http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/forster-frank-menzies-23427. See also the article “A College Benefactor: Frank Forster” in Australian and New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology 2004; 44: 3-5.)

Robert 'Bob' Leonard Pulsford was born on 2nd September 1915 in Waterloo, New South Wales (NSW), Australia. He attended Hawkesbury Agricultural College and worked as a jackaroo on three properties in NSW. In 1941, he enlisted with the Australian Imperial Force for a year in the Territory of Papua and New Guinea (TPNG), serving in Port Moresby, Buna, Finschhafen and Madang in a Malaria Control Unit. After demobilization he completed a Bachelor of Arts (BA) at the University of Sydney, graduating with Honours in Anthropology. He began his service in TPNG in April 1950 with the Department of Agriculture, Stock and Fisheries (DASF), based first at Boram near Wewak, and then at Urip near Dagua, 30 miles west of Wewak, where he managed the Dagua Rural Progress Society, producing rice and peanuts as cash crops.

In 1953, he married Mary Upton and their children were born in the Territory; Ian in Wewak and Susan in Lorengau. In 1955, he was posted to Manus, as District Agricultural Officer, where copra was the main economic crop, and in 1958 to Taliligap in the Gazelle Peninsula where he was in charge of a training centre with a focus on cocoa production. He was in Rabaul for two years as District Agricultural Officer for East New Britain then changed careers in 1963 and became the first Lecturer in Sociology and Anthropology at the newly formed Papuan Medical College in Port Moresby teaching medical students and nurses. He retired in December 1973 when the Medical College became the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG). During this period, he co-authored 'Health in a Developing Country' with Prof John Cawte. He was awarded a Masters (MA) degree from the University of Sydney for his thesis: 'Changing Attitudes to Illness and Misfortune amongst the Motu – Koita'; the result of ten years study in Pari urban village near Port Moresby. Pulsford died in 2004.

Yacine Benhalima is French-Moroccan of Tahitian descent. He is a PhD candidate in history at the University of French Polynesia and Victoria University of Wellington. His current research focuses on the Free French in the Pacific during the Second World War, with an emphasis on Tahiti and French Polynesia. He graduated with a double BA in history and modern literature from Paris-Est Créteil University in 2018 and with a Masters in history from École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in 2020, writing a master’s thesis on the Pacific Battalion which was later published (Le Bataillon du Pacifique 1940-1946, L’Harmattan, 2021).