Robert McCarrison was born in Portadown, County Armagh, and studied medicine at Queen's College, Belfast, and at the Richmond Hospital, Dublin. In 1900 he joined the Indian Medical Service. His study of goitre, cretinism and deficiency diseases had to be put in abeyance because of active service during the First World War. In 1918 he returned to India and continued his research and from 1929 until 1935 held the position of director of the Nutrition Research Laboratories at Coonoor. He retired from the Indian Medical Service with the rank of major-general. During the Second World War he was official medical adviser and for ten years from 1945 he was the first Director of Post-Graduate Medical Education at Oxford. He was awarded the Kaisar-i-Hind Gold Medal for public service in India, and the Prix Amussat of the Academy of Medicine of Paris for his original research. From 1928 to 1935 he served as Honorary Physician to the King, and in 1933 he was knighted. On a tour of America he lectured extensively in leading universities and medical centres. The Work of Sir Robert McCarrison, which was presented to him on his seventy-fifth birthday, included all his important papers. In London a McCarrison Society has been founded.

Born:	15 March 1878
Died:	18 May 1960