Arthur St George Huggett

He was born in North Kensington in London, the son of Arthur Henry Richard Huggett ( a lecturer in botany at Goldsmiths College) and his wife, Helen Mary McCarthy, an active Suffragette of Irish descent. He was raised as a Roman Catholic but later denounced his faith. He was educated by a private governess until 12 years old then at Wimbledon College then studied medicine at the University of London.[1]

His training was interrupted by the First World War during which he served 1918 to 1919 with the Royal Army Medical Corps in Murmansk, supporting British troops in the ill-judged invasion of Russia after the German surrender. Returning to London he graduated BSc in 1920 and MB in 1921.

From 1919 he acted as a Demonstrator in the Physiology lectures at St Thomas's Hospital in London. In 1925 he received his first doctorate (PhD) and a second (DSc) in 1930 at which point he was promoted to Lecturer. He was given a full professorship at St Marys Hospital Medical School in 1935 where he then worked until retiral in 1964. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1958 and a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1965. His proposers for the latter were Robert Campbell Garry, Norman Davidson, Hamish Munro and Paul Bacsich .[2]

He retired to Edinburgh and died there on 21 July 1968.

He married three times: firstly in 1923 to Margaret Mary Head (d.1934); secondly in 1938 to Esther Margaret Killick (d.1960); and lastly in 1962 to the eminent botanist Helen Kemp Porter (d.1987), then a widow.[3]