Robert Willis

After graduating M.D. from the University of Edinburgh in 1819, he built his career in London as a surgeon and physician. He became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1823, was later admitted as a licentiate of the College of Physicians, and in 1827 was appointed librarian of the newly formed library of the Royal College of Surgeons.

Much of his reputation came from medical writing and editing rather than bedside practice. He translated major continental works into English, including books by Gaspard Spurzheim, Pierre Rayer, Karl F. H. Marx, and Rudolf Wagner, helping make current medical scholarship more accessible to British readers.

He also published original works such as Urinary Diseases and their Treatment and Illustrations of Cutaneous Disease. Late in life, he turned toward medical history, producing studies on Michael Servetus, John Calvin, William Harvey, and the discovery of blood circulation before his death at Barnes in Surrey in 1878.