William Smith Greenfield FRSE FRCPE LLD (1846-1919) was a British anatomist. He was an expert on anthrax.
He was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire on 9 January 1846. He studied Medicine at the University of London graduating MB BS in 1872.In 1878 he succeeded John Burdon-Sanderson as Professor of Pathology at the Brown Institute. In 1881 he went to Edinburgh to become Professor of Pathology and Clinical Medicine.
In 1884, he was living at 7 Heriot Row, a magnificent Georgian terraced townhouse in Edinburgh's Second New Town.[1]
In 1886, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Sir William Turner, James Cossar Ewart, Robert Gray and Peter Guthrie Tait.[2]
In 1893, he gave the Bradshaw Lecture to the Royal College of Physicians. In 1893 he was also elected a member of the Harveian Society of Edinburgh.[3] [4]
He retired to Elie in Fife in 1912, being succeeded by Prof James Lorrain Smith.[5] He died in Juniper Green south of Edinburgh on 12 August 1919.
Deeply evangelical, one of his sons became a minister, and two of his daughters became Christian missionaries in India. Sons, Thomas Challen Greenfield BSc, A.M.Inst CE, M. Inst W.E., Water Engineer; Godwin Greenfield, a noted Neuropathologist founding the British Neuropathological Society.
His sketch portrait of 1884, by William Brassey Hole, is held by the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.[6]