James Rögnvald Learmonth was born on 23 March 1895 in Gatehouse of Fleet, Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland.[3] He first studied at Girthon School where his father, William Learmonth, was headmaster, later moving to Kilmarnock Academy.[4][5] From there, he went to the University of Glasgow to study medicine, starting in the autumn of 1913.[2] He completed his first year, but further study was interrupted by the outbreak of World War I.[2] He served in France on the Western Front as a commissioned officer with the King's Own Scottish Borderers.[3] By the end of the war, he had attained the rank of captain.[2]
Medical career
After the war, Learmonth returned to the University of Glasgow and added to the honours he had received in his first year, graduating in 1921.[2] He was considered the "outstanding medical student of his year",[5] being awarded the university's Brunton Medal.[2] He then continued his medical training at Glasgow's Western Infirmary during 1921 and 1922.[5] This was followed by a period of research that led to a Rockefeller Scholarship at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, USA, for the year 1924–5.[5]
Following his research work in the US, he returned to Scotland and resumed his work at the Western Infirmary in Glasgow.[5] He also continued to study and in 1927 he obtained his Masters in Surgery (Ch.M.) and in 1928 he became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.[1] His research work led to him being invited back to the Mayo Clinic for a second time, and he worked there for the next four years.[5]
In 1932, Learmonth chose to give up his practice in the US and returned to Scotland to take up the position of Regius Professor of Surgery at the University of Aberdeen, a position he would hold for the next six years until 1938.[5] He then held professorships in surgery at the University of Edinburgh from 1939 until his retirement in 1956.[1] The first was the Chair of Surgery (1939), which he then held jointly with the Regius Chair of Clinical Surgery (1946).[1] One of his students at Edinburgh during this period was Sheila Sherlock, who became a pioneering hepatologist.[6]
Learmonth retired in 1956 at the age of 61.[5] He moved to Broughton with his wife, Charlotte Newell Bundy, whom he had met and married in 1925 during his first period working at the Mayo Clinic.[1] Charlotte was the daughter of F. G. and Nellie Bundy, of St. Johnsbury, Vermont, USA.[4] They had two children, a son and a daughter.[3] In his retirement, Learmonth worked as an assessor for the University of Glasgow.[5] Early in 1967, Learmonth, who was a heavy smoker, was diagnosed with lung cancer; he died at his home in Broughton later that year on 27 September 1967.[1][5]
^ ab'LEARMONTH, Sir James (Rögnvald)', in Who Was Who, A. & C. Black, 1920–2008; online edition by Oxford University Press, December 2007, accessed 14 February 2011
Dellon, A. Lee; Amadio, Peter C. (2000). "James R. Learmonth: The First Peripheral Nerve Surgeon". Journal of Reconstructive Microsurgery. 16 (3): 213–7. doi:10.1055/s-2000-7555. PMID10803626.