Bertrand Dawson, 1st Viscount Dawson of Penn

Bertrand Edward Dawson, 1st Viscount Dawson of Penn GCVO KCB KCMG PC FRCP (9 March 1864 – 7 March 1945) was a physician to the British Royal Family and President of the Royal College of Physicians.

Dawson was born in Croydon, the son of Henry Dawson, of Purley, an architect.

He entered St Paul's School in London in 1877 and University College London in 1879, graduating in 1888 with a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree. He graduated from the Royal London Hospital in 1893 with a Doctor of Medicine (MD) degree.

After graduation he was registered as a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons (MRCS) in 1890 and invested as a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (FRCP) in 1903, and worked as a physician for several years. In 1907, Dawson joined the Royal Household as a physician-extraordinary to King Edward VII, an office he held until 1910, when he was promoted to a physician-in-ordinary under King George V until 1914. He was appointed Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (KCVO) in 1911. Following the outbreak of World War I, he was given the rank of Colonel in the Royal Army Medical Corps in November 1914. He served on the Western Front in France from 1915 to 1919, rising to the rank of Major-General (he had served as a Royal Army Medical Corps officer in the Territorial Force for many years), noticing the poor physical fitness of British troops and conducting research into trench fever. He was mentioned in despatches.