English writer, physician and activist Michael Dillon was BOTD in 1915. Born in London to an Anglo-Irish aristocratic family, he was assigned female at birth. His mother died when he was a child, and he was raised in Folkestone by relatives. He studied at Oxford University, captaining the women’s rowing team, and began presenting as male. After graduation, he worked in a medical laboratory in Bristol, and began secretly injecting himself with testosterone. In 1942, he was admitted to hospital for hypoglycaemia, and persuaded a plastic surgeon to give him a double mastectomy. He officially changed his name to Michael in 1944, and was accepted to the (all-male) medical school at Trinity College Dublin. In 1946, he met the plastic surgeon Harold Gillies, who agreed to carry out a phalloplasty, thought to be the world’s first successful female-to-male gender reassignment surgery. In the same year, Dillon published Self: A Study in Endocrinology and Ethics, advocating for better treatment for transgender patients. The book brought him to the attention of Roberta Cowell, who allowed Dillon to perform male-to-female reassignment surgery. Dillon later became obsessed with Cowell, proposing marriage in 1951, which Cowell refused. In 1952, Dillon became a doctor in the Merchant Navy, working in overseas postings for several years. He was outed as transgender in 1953 after attempting to amend the Debrett‘s and Burke’s peerage guides, listing himself as the male heir to the Dillon baronetcy. The resulting scandal led him to attempt suicide, followed by a visit to India. He eventually converted to Buddhism, giving away his possessions and inheritance and taking the name Jivaka. He died suddenly in 1962, aged 47. His unpublished memoir, Out of the Ordinary, was finally published in 2016.