Harvey Pirie

Life

He was born in Glasgow the son of Dr John Pirie of 26 Elmbank Crescent.

Pirie was commissioned into the Royal Field Artillery as a second lieutenant on 28 March 1900, but resigned from the military later the same year. He earned his first medical degree at Glasgow University graduating MB ChB in 1902. From 1902 until 1904 he participated in the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition on the ex-whaling ship Scotia, under William Speirs Bruce, Pirie acting as both surgeon and geologist. This involved spending the majority of 1903 on a makeshift base on the South Orkney Islands. He went on to postgraduate studies at the University of Edinburgh and was awarded his doctorate (MD) in 1907 after producing his thesis - 'On the smaller polygonal cells of the grey matter of the spinal cord'.

In 1908 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Daniel John Cunningham, Alexander Bruce, Henry Harvey Littlejohn, and David Waterston.

He later worked in a private medical practice in Scotland. In 1913, he joined the Colonial Medical Service in Kenya as a bacteriologist and he became deputy director at the South African Institute for Medical Research in Johannesburg from 1926 till 1941.