Name Carl Browning | ||
Prof Carl Hamilton Browning LLD FRS FRSE (1881–1973) was a Scottish bacteriologist and immunologist. He is especially remembered for his brief but important work in Germany with Paul Ehrlich. He discovered the therapeutic qualities of acridine dyes.
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Life
He was born on 21 May 1881 the son of Hugh Hamilton Browning, a schoolmaster. He studied at Glasgow Academy where he excelled becoming the Dux and receiving medals in Classics, English and Mathematics. He then went to Glasgow University 1900 to 1907 where he graduated in Medicine. Using a combination of Coats scholarship and election as a Carnegie Fellow he travelled to Frankfurt-am-Main in Germany for two years of study at the Paul Ehrlich Institute, 1905 to 1907.
In 1908 he began lecturing in bacteriology at Glasgow University, working under Prof Robert Muir. As a result of his prestigious research in Germany, in 1911 he was appointed Director of the Clinical Laboratory at the Western Infirmary in Glasgow, aged only 30. During the First World War he was appointed to the Bland-Sutton Institute of Pathology at the Middlesex Hospital. During the war he also obtained a Professorship in Bacteriology at London University. After the war he returned to his home city of Glasgow and was Professor of Bacteriology at Glasgow University (known as the Gardiner Chair) until retirement in 1951.
In 1935 St Andrews University awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Letters (LLD). In 1936 Edinburgh University awarded him the Cameron Prize for his extensive work on chemotherapy .
In 1947 Browning created a section specialising in Medical Mycology (fungal diseases in humans) at his Department in Glasgow’s Western Infirmary. He entrusted the running of this section to James Clerk Gentles (1921-1997).
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1928 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1945.
He died in Glasgow on the 22 January 1972.
Browning was sculpted by Benno Schotz in 1950.
Family
In 1909 he married Isabella Paterson Murdoch (d.1957). They had one son and two daughters.