Edward Provan Cathcart

Edward Provan Cathcart CBE FRS FRSE (18 July 1877 – 18 February 1954) was a Scottish physician and physiologist of international fame. The Cathcart Chair in Biochemistry at Glasgow University is named after him. Together with John Boyd Orr he published influential papers on protein metabolism in man. He is also remembered as Chairman of the Scottish Health Board Committee 1933-1936 . The Cathcart Committee (named after him) was critical to the Scottish input to the foundation of the National Health Service after the Second World War. His obituary described his as a "life well spent in the service of mankind".

He was born in Ayr on 18 July 1877, the son of Edward Moore Cathcart, a merchant in the town. His father died when Cathcart was only nine, leaving his mother, Margaret Miller (from a family of rivet and bolt manufacturers), alone, to raise him and his younger brother and sister. He was educated at Ayr Academy, then attended Glasgow University graduating in 1900. He then travelled to Germany, both Munich and Berlin, to complete further studies in Bacteriology and Chemical Pathology (during which time he was heavily influenced by the work of Carl von Voit). From 1902 to 1905 he worked at the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine in London.

From 1905 to 1915 he served as the Grieve Lecturer in Physiological Chemistry at Glasgow University. In the First World War he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps. He was then attached to the Anti-Gas Services section, rising to be Depute Director of that service. In 1917 he was transferred to the same role in relation to the Home Services. He rose to the level of Lt Col Director on the General Staff (Army Medical Services).

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