Ian Bruce Sneddon

Ian Bruce Sneddon (1915-1987) was a British dermatologist who spent almost his whole career in Sheffield, and the physician after whom Sneddon's syndrome is named. Born in Sheffield on 6 March 1915, the son of a Scottish general practitioner, he graduated in medicine at the University of Sheffield in 1937 and trained in the skin department of the Sheffield Royal Infirmary. He served in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve as a skin and medical specialist during the Second World War, and with Cyril Astley Clarke wrote on nutritional neuropathy in prisoners of war. Back in Sheffield he became a consultant in 1946 and clinical dean of the medical school from 1950 to 1968. With Wilkinson he described subcorneal pustular dermatosis, known as Sneddon-Wilkinson disease. In 1965 he reported six patients who had both cerebrovascular incidents and livedo reticularis, the association now called Sneddon's syndrome. He also studied the psychological side of skin disease. He was president of the British Association of Dermatologists in 1970, received the CBE in 1974, and died on 10 October 1987.