John Macleod (physiologist)

John James Rickard Macleod, FRS
J.J.R. Macleod ca. 1928
Born	(1876-09-06)6 September 1876 Clunie, Perthshire, Scotland
Died	16 March 1935(1935-03-16) (aged 58) Aberdeen, Scotland
Citizenship	British
Nationality	Scottish
Fields	Medicine
Alma mater	University of Aberdeen
Known for	Co-discovery of insulin
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1923)

John James Rickard Macleod, FRS (6 September 1876 – 16 March 1935) was a Scottish biochemist and physiologist. He devoted his career to diverse topics in physiology and biochemistry, but was chiefly interested in carbohydrate metabolism. He is noted for his role in the discovery and isolation of insulin during his tenure as a lecturer at the University of Toronto, for which he and Frederick Banting received the 1923 Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine. Awarding the prize to Macleod was controversial at the time, because according to Banting's version of events, Macleod's role in the discovery was negligible. It was not until decades after the events that an independent review acknowledged a far greater role than was attributed to him at first.

Macleod was born in Clunie, near Dunkeld in central Scotland. Soon after he was born, his father Robert Macleod, a clergyman, was transferred to Aberdeen, where John attended Aberdeen Grammar School and enrolled in the study of medicine at the University of Aberdeen. At the University of Aberdeen, one of MacLeod's principal teachers was the young Professor John Alexander MacWilliam. He obtained a PhD in medicine in 1898 and then spent a year studying biochemistry at the University of Leipzig, Germany, on a travelling scholarship. After returning to Britain, he became a demonstrator at the London Hospital Medical School, where in 1902 he was appointed lecturer in biochemistry. In the same year, he was awarded a doctorate in public health from Cambridge University. Around that time he published his first research article, a paper on phosphorus content in muscles.