Sutherland Simpson
Sutherland Simpson FRSE was a Scottish physician who emigrated to the United States to become Professor of Physiology at Cornell University.
Life
He was born at Saraquoy on the island of Flotta in the Orkney Isles on 3 February 1863, the eldest son of Margaret and Sutherland Simpson. He attended a school on the island run by the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge. He worked on his father's croft and aimed to be master of a sailing ship so studied navigation under a teacher on the island, John Brown Gorrie.Around 1881, he went to Leith near Edinburgh seeking work on a ship but, failing in this took a position as a laboratory assistant in the Physiology Department at the University of Edinburgh under Professor William Rutherford. He took seven years of evening classes to gain a general degree then became eligible to study medicine at the university. He graduated MB ChB in 1899, aged 36. In the same year Rutherford died and was replaced by Professor Edward Albert Sharpey-Schafer. He continued as his lab assistant gaining his first doctorate in 1901 and second in 1903.
From 1902 he lectured in Experimental Physiology at the University of Edinburgh. In 1908 Sharpey-Schafer was invited to Cornell University and asked to recommend a professor of Physiology and Biochemistry. He recommended Simpson changing his life forever and Simpson began later that year.
In 1911, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Sir Edward Albert Sharpey-Schafer, Sir William Turner, William Cramer and George Chrystal.