McGill Library
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Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
Bain, W. A. (William Alexander), 1905-1971
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
1905-1971
History
William Alexander Bain was born on August 20, 1905, in Dunbar, Scotland.
He was a Scottish pharmacologist, best known for his early work with antihistamine drugs. In 1928, he graduated from the University of Edinburgh with first-class honours in physiology. In 1930, he won the Ellis Prize in Physiology with an essay on heart hormones. In 1931, Bain was appointed Lecturer in Experimental Physiology at the University of Edinburgh and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 1934, Bain was appointed a lecturer at the University of Leeds, where he stayed for 25 years. He was awarded a D.Sc. degree from the University of Edinburgh in 1953 for his work entitled "Contributions to the study of histamine antagonists in man." From 1954 to 1957, Bain was Press Editor of the British Journal of Pharmacology and Chemotherapy. In 1958, he assumed the directorship of the new Smith, Kline and French Research Institute at Welwyn Garden City, England.
In 1929, he married Bessie Beveridge Smith (1900-1961), and, later, he remarried Freda Dratman (1912–2008). He died on August 24, 1971, in Digswell, England.