Career
Pirie named the bacterial genus Listeria in honor of Joseph Lister and the Pirie Peninsula is named after him. Pirie earned his medical degree at the University of Edinburgh. From 1902-1904 he participated in the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition under William Speirs Bruce as a surgeon and geologist.
He later worked in a private medical practice in Scotland.
In 1913, he joined the Colonial Medical Service in Kenya as a bacteriologist and he became deputy director at the South African Institute for Medical Research in Johannesburg from 1926-1941. Pirie was a noted philatelist with a specialism in the philately of the polar regions.
He was Editor of the South African Philatelist for thirty-six years, and wrote important works on the stamps of Swaziland and the New Republic. He signed the Roll of Distinguished Philatelists in 1948 and in the same year, the Roll of Distinguished Philatelists of South Africa.
