John Russell Greig

John Russell Greig

Prof John McDougal Russell Greig CBE FRSE (1889-) was a Scottish veterinarian. He was Director of the Moredun Research Institute from 1930 to 1954. He is noted for the development of several important animal vaccines: Enzootic abortion in ewes; Braxy and Louping ill.^[1] His work on milk effectively created "clean milk" for the first time in Britain.^[2]

Life

He was born in Leith in September 1889. He was educated at the Royal High School in Edinburgh. In 1906 he entered the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies. He completed his studies in 1911 and was admitted a member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. He then began working in the Veterinary Department of the City of Glasgow. He self-financed a trip to Copenhagen to meet Bernhard Bang and learn of his studies on bovine tuberculosis.^[3]

In the First World War he served as a Captain in the Royal Army Veterinary Corps. On demob he joined the Department of Agriculture and was posted to South Wales to tackle a rabies outbreak, gaining him the nickname "Rabies Russell".

In September 1919 he was appointed Professor of Materia Medica at his alma mater, the Royal Dick College in Edinburgh.

In 1931 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Francis Albert Eley Crew, James Hartley Ashworth, Sir William Wright Smith, and Henry Dryerre . He was awarded the Society's Neill Prize for 1949-51.^[4]

In 1946 he was created a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).^[5]

He retired in 1954.

Publications

• Milk Fever (1926)
• The Nature of Lambing Sickness (1929)
• The Shepherd's Guide (1951)
• Grieg and his Scottish Ancestry (1953)
• The Sheepdog: Management and Feeding (1956)

References