[4] The family shortly moved to Leeds, then to Darlington and then to Chesham, Bucks, where he attended Harrow County School.

From there he entered the Middlesex Hospital Medical School in London in 1916, spent one year in the army in 1917, and qualified MRCS and LRCP in 1921.

[5] In 1924 he was appointed to the new Chair of Biochemistry at the University of London which was started in the Bland Sutton Institute of Pathology at the Middlesex.

His proposers were Francis Albert Eley Crew, Alan William Greenwood, James Kendall and Guy Frederic Marrian.

He served the Royal College of Physicians for some years as Harveian Librarian and in 1962 was elected President, the first to hold the office who was laboratory based and not engaged in clinical practice.