Lumsden, William Hepburn Russell, MD, FRSE, FRCP(Ed) (1914-2002), tropical medicine specialist

William Hepburn Russell Lumsden (1914-2002), virologist and protozoologist, was born in Forfar. He trained first as a zoologist before transferring to medicine, qualifying from Glasgow University: his subsequent career in tropical medicine combined the two disciplines. In the Second World War he served in the Royal Army Medical Corps as an entomologist, malariologist, and eventually commanding officer of Malaria Field Units, in Palestine, North Africa, Italy and India. In 1947 he became entomologist in the Yellow Fever Research Institute, Entebbe, Uganda, and in 1958 director of the East African Trypanosomiasis Research Organization. He spent some years at the Edinburgh Centre for Tropical Veterinary Medicine before serving as Professor of medical protozoology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine from 1968 to 1979. In 2002, he died in Edinburgh.

His obituary can be found in the British Medical Journal 2002; 324:1527 (22 June).

At Wellcome Collection:

WTI/EAT comprises a small collection on the East African Tsetse and Trypanosomiasis Research and Reclamation Organisation, of which William Hepburn Russell Lumsden was director from 1957 to 1963.