Patrick Laidlaw

Sir Patrick Playfair Laidlaw FRS FRCP (26 September 1881 – 20 March 1940) was a Scottish virologist.

Around 1910, he and Henry H. Dale studied the properties of histamine (then called β-imidazolylethylamine) at the Wellcome Physiological Research Laboratories after which he went to Guy's Hospital as a lecturer in experimental pathology.

[3] He was one of the scientists working at the Medical Research Council (NIMR Farm Laboratories) at Mill Hill who first isolated influenza virus from humans.

[4] This happened when ferrets they were working on to develop a distemper vaccine caught influenza from one of the scientists in the laboratory.

He was knighted in the 1935 Birthday Honours for distinguished service to medical science.