Ralph Lownie
Ralph Hamilton Lownie was a British barrister and judge.
Ralph Hamilton Lownie was born in Edinburgh on 27 September 1924 into a literary family, the son of James Hood Wilson Lownie and Jessie Helen Aitken, and educated there at George Watson's College. His maternal grandfather, Edward Hamilton Aitken, was a natural history writer, and civil servant in India, and his mother had had a book published while still a child.
In 1943 he joined the Royal Engineers and fought in the Second World War in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.
He earned a general arts degree from the University of Edinburgh. While working he completed a PhD in homicide and diminished responsibility at the University of Kent.
In 1960, he married Claudine Lecrocq, and they had a son, the historian Andrew Lownie, and a daughter, Solange.