Rubert William Boyce

Sir Rubert William Boyce FRS (22 April 1863 – 16 June 1911) was an English pathologist and hygienist, known for his work on tropical medicine.

Born on 22 April 1863 at Osborne Terrace, Clapham Road, London, he was second son of Robert Henry Boyce, originally of Carlow, Ireland, an engineer and surveyor of British buildings in China, and his wife Louisa, daughter of Dr. Neligan, a medical practitioner in Athlone.

Four of its endowed chairs owed their creation mainly to him: those of biochemistry, of tropical medicine, of comparative pathology, and of medical entomology.

[1] In 1898 Joseph Chamberlain, as secretary of state for the colonies, proposed that the school of medicine at Liverpool should establish a department for the study of tropical diseases.

Boyce, with Alfred Lewis Jones, then founded the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, of which Ronald Ross became director, the post being shortly associated with an endowed chair at the university.

He became a member of the African advisory board of the Colonial Office, and served on royal commissions on sewage disposal and on tuberculosis.

He died of an apoplectic seizure on 16 June 1911, at Park Lodge, Croxteth Road, Liverpool, and was buried at Bebington cemetery, Wirral, Cheshire.