W. (Wilfred) Trotter

Born in 1872, Wilfred Batten Lewis Trotter was a British surgeon who became one of the early pioneers of neurosurgery. Alongside his medical career, he also gained lasting attention for his ideas about group behavior and social psychology, especially his writing on what he called the herd instinct.

Trotter is best remembered by many readers for Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War, a work that brought his psychological and social observations to a wide audience. His unusual combination of surgical expertise and interest in how people think and act in groups gives his writing a distinctive voice.

He died in 1939, but his reputation has endured in both medical history and the history of modern social thought.