John Gray McKendrick

John Gray McKendrick
Born	12 August 1841 Aberdeen, Scotland
Died	Glasgow, Scotland
Citizenship	British
Nationality	Scottish
Fields	Physiology
Institutions	Scotland
Alma mater	University of Aberdeen, University of Edinburgh, University of Glasgow
Notable awards	Makdougall-Brisbane Prize

John Gray McKendrick FRSE (12 August 1841 – 2 January 1926) was a distinguished Scottish Physiologist. He was born and studied in Aberdeen, Scotland, and served as professor at the University of Glasgow from 1876-1906. He was co-founder of the Physiological Society.

Early life

John Gray McKendrick was born in Old Machar, Aberdeen in 1841 and went on the study at the University of Aberdeen and the University of Edinburgh before graduating in 1864 as a MB ChB. He married Mary Souttar in 1867 and two of their children, John Souttar M’Kendrick and Anderson Gray M'Kendrick, would go on to become fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in their own right. In 1869, he became the assistant to the Professor of Physiology at the University of Edinburgh, John Hughes Bennett, pursuing his own research into the nervous system and special senses. Mckendrick went on to be elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1873, having been proposed by Sir William Turner, serving as a councillor and eventually the vice-president from 1894 until 1900.

Glasgow

He took up a post at the University of Glasgow in 1873, first as an extramural lecturer (one of his students was the physician Sophia Jex-Blake) and then as Professor of “Theory of Physic or Institutes of Medicine” in 1876. John McKenrick was a popular lecturer, raising significant funds for modernising his department and leading it into concentrating on the study and teaching of physiology. The name of his position was changed to Professor of Physiology in 1893.

McKendrick was a founder member of the Physiological Society and Fullerian Professor of Physiology and Comparative Anatomy at the Royal Institution from 1881 to 1884; he resigned the Fullerian Professor on 5 March 1884 due to ill health. In 1891 and 1895 was invited to deliver the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture on Life in Motion; or the Animal Machine and Sound, Hearing and Speech respectively.

He became Provost of Stonehaven upon his retirement in 1910.

Partial bibliography

• Life of Helmholtz (1899)
• A Text Book of Physiology, 2 volumes (1888, 1889).

External links

Academic offices
Preceded by Edward Albert Sharpey-Schafer	Fullerian Professor of Physiology 1881–1884	Succeeded by Arthur Gamgee