Norman Walker

Sir Norman Purvis Walker FRCPE (2 August 1862, Dysart – 7 November 1942, Balerno) was a Scottish dermatologist, and physician-in-charge of the Skin Department at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. He was also one of the first persons in Britain to benefit from the discovery of insulin as a treatment for diabetes.

Education and early career He was born in the manse at Dysart (close to Kirkcaldy) the son of the local minister, Rev Walker.

Norman Walker was educated at Edinburgh Academy, and graduated from the University of Edinburgh with an MB CM in 1884, and an MD in 1888. In 1888, he produced a thesis entitled ‘Pleurisy: with clinical notes and remarks’. The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, where Norman Walker worked for most of his career. In 1883, Walker started in his first post, as resident physician to Claude Muirhead at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, and for the next five years he was in general practice in Dalston, Cumberland.

Having decided to study dermatology, he went to Europe to specialise and learn from pioneers of the field. His first stop was in Vienna, where Hans von Hebra and Moriz Kohn Kaposi continued the elder Hebra's tradition; in Prague Walker devoted much of his time to the study of histopathology and bacteriology in the laboratory of Professor Philipp Josef Pick; and in Hamburg he became a student of Paul Gerson Unna, one of the pioneers in dermapathology. and was then appointed assistant physician to the skin department of the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh under Allan Jamieson, until 1906. When the latter retired, Walker became physician in charge of the skin wards from 1906 to 1924, and consultant physician from 1925 to 1942. Additionally, Walker gave lectures on diseases of the skin at the University of Edinburgh and at the royal colleges, and had a private practice as well as a special clinic to treat lupus vulgaris, which he continued after he retired.

His other distinctions included honorary fellowship of the American Medical Association and honorary membership of the Association of Military Surgeons of the United States, as well as honorary degrees of LLD at St Andrews (1920), Edinburgh (1926), and Bristol (1933), and MD Dublin (1935).

Sir Norman Walker died at home in Greensyke, Balerno, Midlothian, on 7 November 1942. He was survived by his wife and children.