Thomas Porter McMurray

Thomas Porter McMurray (1887 to 1949) was a British orthopaedic surgeon remembered for describing the McMurray test, born in Belfast on 5 December 1887 and dead in London on 16 November 1949. He graduated from Queen's University, Belfast in 1910 and took a house job in Liverpool under Sir Robert Jones. He served as a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps in France for a short time and returned to the Alder Hey Military Hospital in Liverpool in 1914. He lectured in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of Liverpool from 1924 to 1938, succeeded Jones as director of orthopaedics, and in 1938 became the first professor of orthopaedic surgery in Liverpool. He was president of the British Orthopaedic Society and the Liverpool Medical Institution and president-elect of the British Medical Association. His dexterity was noted, since he could remove a meniscus in five minutes, and he built a postgraduate school of orthopaedic surgery at Liverpool on the principles of Hugh Owen Thomas. He died of a heart attack at a railway station in London.