David Wilkie (surgeon)

Sir David Percival Dalbreck Wilkie (1882-1938), known to colleagues as DPD, was a Scottish surgeon who became one of the first of a new kind of young professor of surgery devoted to research as well as teaching. Born in Kirriemuir, he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, worked at Leith Hospital and the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, and served as a naval reserve surgeon on a hospital ship in the First World War. In 1924 he became professor of systematic surgery at Edinburgh and held the chair until his death. There he set up a surgical research laboratory from which many later surgical professors emerged. He was knighted in 1936, was president of the Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland, and is widely regarded as the father of British academic surgery.