Alexander Burns Wallace

Alexander "Alister" Burns Wallace CBE FRSE FRCSE (1906–1974) was a Scottish plastic surgeon. He was a founding member and president (1951) of the British Association of Plastic Surgeons, and the first editor of the British Journal of Plastic Surgery.

Born in Edinburgh in 1906, Wallace was educated at George Heriot's School and Edinburgh University graduating with his MB ChB in 1929. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1932. Following that, he went to McGill University completing a MSc degree in lymphatics research in 1936. During World War II he served as plastic surgeon at the Scottish Emergency Medical Hospital at Bangour (1940–45). In 1945 he moved to the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh, and was Reader in Plastic Surgery at Edinburgh University from 1946 until his retirement in 1970. In 1973, he was awarded a PhD by the University of St Andrews.

Wallace Rule of Nines

In 1951 Wallace introduced the "Rule of Nines" in an article published in the British medical journal "Lancet":

"For patients over the age of 16 years the 'Rule of Nines' (Wallace 1951) indicates the percentage of TBSA accounted for by various parts of the body. Nine per cent for the head and each arm, 18 per cent each for lower limbs and front and back of the trunk, and 1 per cent for the perineal region... Wallace AB (1951) The exposure treatment of burns. Lancet. 1, 501."