Joseph Warwick Bigger was an Irish politician and academic.
Background
Bigger was born on 11 September 1891 in Belfast, Ireland to Sir Edward Coey Bigger who was a Senator from 1925 to 1936 and to Maude Coulter Warwick. In 1900, his family shifted to Dublin due to appointment of his father as medical inspector under the Local Government Board of Ireland.
Education
He attended Presbyterian College in North Carolina and later, Trinity College, Dublin.
Career
Soon after his graduation from the Trinity College, he was appointed as a demonstrator in pathology and bacteriology at Sheffield University in South Yorkshire, England. However, in 1919 he returned to Dublin and became pathologist and medical inspector under the Local Government Board and the professor of forensic and preventive medicine at the Royal College of Surgeons in 1920. He served as the professor of preventive medicine and bacteriology at Trinity College from 1924 to 1950.
In 1936, Bigger was appointed dean of the medical school at Trinity College where he served until 1939.
He was first elected to the Seanad at a by-election on 22 November 1947 by the University of Dublin constituency. The vacancy was caused by the appointment of Technology C. Kingsmill Moore as a judge of the High Court.
He was re-elected at the 1948 election. He did not contest the 1951 election.
Bigger died on 17 August 1951.
1935 - Handbook of bacteriology for students and practitioners of medicine
1941 - Manitoba Against Microbe.
Personality
He was an independent member of Seanad Éireann from 1947 to 1951.