Ernest Wedderburn

Sir Ernest MacLagan Wedderburn (3 February 1884 – 3 June 1958) was a Scottish lawyer, and a significant figure both in the civic life of Edinburgh and in the legal establishment. He held the posts of Professor of Conveyancing in the University of Edinburgh (1922–35), Deputy Keeper of the Signet (1935–54), and Chairman of the General Council of Solicitors (1936–49), the forerunner to the Law Society of Scotland, and chaired the latter 1949/50. He was also an enthusiastic amateur scientist, and first Treasurer then Vice President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Early life Wedderburn was born in Forfar, Forfarshire in 1884, the son of Anne Oglivie and her husband (and cousin), Dr Alexander Stormonth MacLagan Wedderburn of Pearsie. He was one of 14 children, and the younger brother of Joseph Wedderburn, who became Professor of Mathematics at Princeton and conceive the Wedderburn–Etherington number and Artin–Wedderburn theorem. He was distantly related, through his father, to 18th-century Lord of Session, Peter Wedderburn, Lord Chesterhall, and to the latter's son, Lord Chancellor Alexander Wedderburn, 1st Earl of Rosslyn.

He was educated at George Watson's College then studied law at the University of Edinburgh, graduating with an MA in 1904 and an LLB in 1907. During this period he lived with his uncle J R M Wedderburn at 3 Glencairn Crescent in Edinburgh.

From 1904 he also had practical experience in the offices of Gillespie & Paterson WS at 31 Melville Street.

He qualified as a Writer to the Signet in 1907 and then joined his uncle's firm of Carment, Wedderburn & Watson WS based at 2 Glenfinlas Street off Charlotte Square.

During World War I, he served as Meteorological Officer to GHQ. While employed with the Ordnance Committee, his aptitude for mathematics enabled him to establish a new system for calculating the allowance to be made for ballistic winds in long-range artillery shooting, which had been widely adopted by the end of the war. He was appointed Assistant Director of Experiments at the Ministry of Defence's site at Shoeburyness, Essex, was mentioned twice in despatches and awarded a military OBE.

Ernest practised with the firm until that merger in 1922, when he took up the post of Professor of Conveyancing in the Faculty of Law of the University of Edinburgh, in succession to Professor Mounsey. During this time he pioneered the employment of small tutorial-sized classes in his teaching, a practice which continued until instruction in drafting was removed from undergraduate studies to the Diploma in Legal Practice in 1981. A 1946 photographic portrait of him by the Bassano studio, taken in his capacity as Chairman of the General Council, is held by the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Accounts of the General Council's efficacy are unfavourable, mostly citing lack of funds, and it was replaced in 1949 by a new body, the Law Society of Scotland. This body assumed the responsibility of registering all solicitors and taking cases before the new Solicitors' Discipline Tribunal, as well as charging registration fees to prevent some of the issues faced by its predecessor. Wedderburn served as Chairman of the Law Society in its first year, resigning in 1950.

Science Although a lawyer by trade, Wedderburn had a keen interest in science. During World War I he found a new system for calculating the allowance to be made for ballistic winds in long-range artillery shooting, which had been widely adopted by the end of the war. While a student he worked, in the University's vacations, with Sir John Murray on the bathymetrical study of fresh water lochs. He continued this enthusiasm in later in life, following George Chrystal's work on seiches on the Scottish lochs.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh on 21 January 1907. His proposers were Sir John Murray, George Chrystal, Thomas Nicol Johnston, and William Peddie. Wedderburn won the society's Makdougall-Brisbane Prize for 1908/1910 and was an active member of the society, proposing many notable scientists for membership and serving as treasurer for ten years, from 1937 to 1947. minister of Granton. Their son, Ernest Alexander Maclagan Wedderburn, a Major in the Royal Scots, was killed on 24 December 1944, and is buried in the Ancona War Cemetery, Italy.