Thomas J. Mackie

Thomas Jones Mackie CBE FRSE LLD (5 June 1888 – 6 October 1955) was a noted Scottish bacteriologist; Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Edinburgh; and author of medical research textbooks.

[1] He received his education at the Hamilton Academy from which he attended the University of Glasgow, graduating MB, Ch.B with honours in 1910 and being awarded the Brunton Memorial Prize as the most distinguished student of his year.

Following posts as house-surgeon and house-physician in Glasgow Western Infirmary Mackie attained a Carnegie Scholarship in the department of pathology, attracted to the laboratory by Professor Sir Robert Muir.

Taking the Oxford D.P.H., he worked as an assistant in the Bland-Sutton Institute of Pathology at the Middlesex Hospital until, on outbreak of the First World War in 1914, as a Territorial he was attached to the RAMC (Royal Army Medical Corps) as an officer, serving mainly in the Middle East, and was appointed to the command of the Central Bacteriological Laboratory in Alexandria, Egypt, this leading in 1918 to his appointment to the Werner-Beit chair of bacteriology in the University of Cape Town, South Africa.

In 1953, Professor Mackie succeeded Sir Sydney Smith (forensic expert) as Dean of the Faculty of Medicine in the University of Edinburgh.