Arthur Keith, 1866-1955

The death of Sir Arthur Keith on 7 January 1955, brought to an end an unusually active and varied career in anatomy and anthropology which had extended over more than sixty years. Of these, a quarter of a century was spent in the Royal College of Surgeons where Keith occupied with great distinction the position of Conservator of the Hunterian Museum. Arthur Keith was born on 5 February 1866 at Old Machar in Aberdeenshire, the son of a farmer, John Keith, and the sixth of his ten children. At the age of sixteen he left school with the intention of taking up farming, but a young undergraduate of Aberdeen University who came to lodge at the farm inspired him with the idea of an academic career. Accordingly, his father sent him to Gordon’s College in order to get grounded in Latin and Greek, and in 1884 he entered Marischal College as a medical student. It was here that Keith came under the influence of James Trail the botanist and John Struthers the anatomist, both of whom evidently provided a powerful inspiration which focused his attention on a scientific career. At the end of his first year he won a prize ‘for the highest distinction in the junior division of the anatomy class’—the prize being a copy of the Origin of species. He was also awarded a scholarship of which he was very badly in need at the time, for his father’s death shortly before had imposed a severe financial strain on his family.