E. H. R. Altounyan (1889–1962)

Born at Aleppo, son of Dr A A Altounyan, an Armenian, founder of the hospital of his name in Aleppo, and his Northern-Irish wife, he was educated at Rugby, went up to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, of which he was an exhibitioner, and then to the Middlesex Hospital. The greater part of his surgical career was spent in the hospital at Aleppo, where he returned at the end of the first world war, having served in the RAMC and won the Military Cross in France for gallantry in action. He was a close friend of T E Lawrence, whom he met before the war when Lawrence was an archaeologist at Carchemish on the Euphrates; he wrote the poetic lament "Ornament of Honour" on learning of Lawrence's death.