However, in 1923 his father was transferred to manage the Bank of Scotland branch in the small village of Bonar Bridge in Sutherland, close to his family home in Dornoch.
[2] He began as a medical resident at the Victoria Infirmary in Glasgow, and was promoted to clinical tutor the following year, a role he held for the duration of the Second World War.
In 1945 he left clinical work for a lecturership in physiology at Glasgow University, transferring as senior lecturer to the newly separate Department of Biochemistry in 1947.
The head of the department was James Norman Davidson, but Munro established his own reputation in studies of protein metabolism and nucleic acids, receiving a doctorate (DSc) in 1956, and being appointed full professor in 1964.
[4] From 1977 he joined a US Department of Agriculture task force which led to the construction of the USDA Human Nutrition Research Centre on Ageing at Tufts University, a 15-storey building in downtown Boston.
Although he continued to work until the age of 75, and added to his scientific publications even in his last years, he was increasingly disabled by Parkinson's disease and died of complications of this in Glasgow on 28 October 1994.