Background
Pettigrew was born at Roxhill, Calderbank, Lanarkshire, the son of Robert Pettigrew.
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James Pettigrew
Edit ProfileEducation
He was educated at the Free West Academy in Airdrie and at the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh. In 1861 he graduated in medicine from Edinburgh and became House Surgeon at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.
Career
He was a distinguished naturalist in Edinburgh and London, and at Street Andrews University from 1875 until his death. Pettigrew was an internationally acknowledged authority on animal locomotion. After a late start in Medicine in Edinburgh, Pettigrew flourished under the tutelage of John Goodsir with whom he developed a research programme in the anatomy of the human heart.
Most unusually, as an undergraduate, he was invited to deliver the Croonian Lectures of the Royal Society and the Royal College of Physicians of London in 1860.
In these lectures, Pettigrew advanced a remarkable discussion of the anatomical arrangement of the musculature of the heart. From an early age, Pettigrew demonstrated a remarkable flair for morphological analysis and an analytical grasp of natural history.
In 1862, Pettigrew accepted the post of Assistant Curator at the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London which he held for five years. In 1867 he retired to Ireland (possibly suffering from a psychiatric disorder) to study the flight of birds and bats.
He had a passionate interest in animal locomotion and, more particularly, in the theory of flight, and around the turn of the century made several prototypes of an ornithopter of his own design.
In 1868, at the age of 36, Pettigrew was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1869 he returned to Scotland to take up a position as Curator of the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and as pathologist to the Royal Infirmary. In 1872 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and in the following year a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
In 1873, Pettigrew published Animal Locomotion: or Walking, Swimming and Flying, his most popular work.
In 1875, he was appointed to the Chandos Chair of Medicine and Anatomy at Street Andrews University and established a home on the Scores which he called Swallowgate because of its situation which allowed him to observe birds in flight. Over several subsequent years, Pettigrew assembled his magnum opus Design in Nature, published in three volumes and lavishly illustrated with engravings and photographs.
This was completely published in 1908. In 1889, Pettigrew was elected President of the Harveian Society of Edinburgh.
He died at his home in Street Andrews in 1908.
Membership
Royal Society.
Connections
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Born
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Died
January 30, 1908 (aged 75) -
Nationality
United Kingdom