Anatomist, neurologist, and anthropologist Richard James Arthur Berry was born in Upholland, Lancashire, on 30 May 1867. He was educated privately in Southport, and prior to attending Edinburgh University from 1886 he was apprenticed to a firm of shipbrokers in Liverpool. At University he followed the medical course and graduated in 1891 with M.B. and Ch.M. He also studied in Dublin, London, and Berlin. Berry then became House Surgeon to Thomas Annandale, Professor of Clinical Surgery (1838-1907) at the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh. In 1894, his thesis on the vermiform appendix for the degree of M.D. won him the Gunning Victoria Prize in Surgery, and in 1895 he became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. In 1896, Berry was lecturing on anatomy at Edinburgh University, and in 1897 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 1905, he became Professor of Anatomy at the University of Melbourne, Australia. There, Berry was to revolutionise the teaching of anatomy and his Practical anatomy (1914) remained the text for students in Melbourne until the late-1930s. Once he had re-organised his department, he turned his attention to the study of Australian and Tasmanian Aboriginals and the metrical and non-metrical features of their skulls, and also to the study of mental deficiency in children. In 1929, however, Berry resigned his post and took up the position of Director of Medical Services at the Stoke Park Colony at Stapleton, Bristol, in England, and Chair of the Burden Mental Research Trust. Until 1940, and his retirement, he carried out extensive research into mental deficiency. His other publications include: A clinical atlas of sectional and topographical anatomy (1911), A cerebral atlas of normal and defective brains (1938), and Your brain and its story (1939). Professor Richard James Arthur Berry died in Clifton, Bristol, on 30 September 1962.
From the guide to the Richard James Arthur Berry (1867-1962), 20th century, (Edinburgh University Library)
