David Horrobin

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Dr David Frederick Horrobin (6 October 1939 - 1 April 2003) was a medical researcher, entrepreneur, author and editor. A pioneering resarcher in the field of fatty acids and a strong supporter of the benefits of fish oils and Evening Primrose Oil.

He attended Balliol College, Oxford, during this time he was influenced by the nutritionist Hugh Macdonald Sinclair. He was appointed Professor and chairman of medical physiology at Nairobi University in 1969. Appointed as a reader in medical physiology at University of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1972 and in 1975 became Professor of medicine at the University of Montreal.

In 1979 he setup the Efamol Research Institute in Nova Scotia, in 1987 this became Scotia Pharmaceuticals with bases in Canada, Scotland and England. He was ousted in a boardroom coup in 1997. His next business was Laxdale Ltd to examine the use of essential fatty acids in treating Schizophrenia and other neurodegenerative diseases.

He founded the journals 'Medical Hypotheses' and 'Prostaglandins, Leukotrienes and Essential Fatty Acids', published 800 papers, was an ISI (Institute for Scientific Information) highly cited scientist, and wrote or edited over a dozen books. He was diagnosed with mantle cell lymphoma which he died of in 2003.