Norman Davidson (biochemist)


James Norman Davidson CBE PRSE FRS was a Scottish biochemist, pioneer molecular biologist and textbook author. The Davidson Building at Glasgow University is named for him.

Life

He was the only child of James Davidson FRSE FSA a lawyer, Treasurer of the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, originally from Aberdeenshire, and his wife, Wilhelmina Ibberson Foote. He was born in Edinburgh on 5 March 1911 and lived in the family home of 30 Bruntsfield Gardens in the south of the city. He was educated locally, at George Watson's College, where he was dux.
He then studied Medicine and Organic Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh graduating BSc degree in 1934, MB ChB in 1937, MD in 1939 and gained a D.Sc. with a thesis on Biochemical investigations on cellular proliferation from the University of Edinburgh in 1945.
In 1937/38 he studied under Otto Heinrich Warburg in Berlin-Dahlem, in the turbulent pre-war days. He returned to Scotland in autumn of 1938 to begin lecturing in Biochemistry at St Andrews University. From 1940 to 45 he was Senior Lecturer in Biochemistry at Aberdeen University.
In 1941 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were James P Kendall, Ernest Cruickshank, Robert Campbell Garry, and Anderson Gray M'Kendrick. He was Secretary to the society 1949-1954, Vice President 1955-58 and served two terms as President from 1958–59 and 1964-67. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1960.
Davidson was Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Glasgow from 1947 to 1972. in 1949 he brought in Martin Smellie as his assistant.
In 1958 he succeeded George M. Wishart as the Gardiner Professor of Phsiology at Glasgow University.
He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1967.
He died of a heart attack in Bearsden in Glasgow on 11 September 1972.

Publications

In 1938 he married Morag McLeod. Their children included Rona McLeod MacKie FRSE and Ailsa Morag Campbell FRSE.