William Rutherford

William Rutherford was born at Ancrum Craig Farm near Ancrum in Roxburghshire, the son of Thomas Rutherford, a farmer. He was educated at Jedburgh Grammar School then studied medicine at Edinburgh University, gaining his doctorate (MD) in 1863.

After studying in Berlin, Vienna, and Paris, he became assistant to John Hughes Bennett, professor of physiology at Edinburgh. After the Edinburgh anatomist John Goodsir told Rutherford about the new experimental physiology in Germany, William Rutherford and the ophthalmologist Douglas Argyll Robertson at Edinburgh became the first in the United Kingdom to introduce the new experimental apparatus of Hermann von Helmholtz, Emil du Bois-Reymond and Carl Ludwig.

In 1869 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, his proposer being John Hughes Bennett.

In 1869 Rutherford became assistant professor of physiology at King's College, London. In 1871 he was appointed professor of physiology at the Royal Institution. In 1874 he returned to Edinburgh University to succeed Bennett as professor of physiology there.

Rutherford lectured at the University of Edinburgh when Arthur Conan Doyle studied medicine there. Like his fictional character Sherlock Holmes, who was based on a real person, Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger was based in part on Rutherford. From 1881 his laboratory assistant was Sutherland Simpson.

His chair at the university was filled by Prof Edward Albert Sharpey-Schafer.