Browne, Sir William

(1692-1774)

   Born in the county of Durham, the son of a physician, Browne took his medical degree at Cambridge in 1721. In 1726 he became a fellow of the College of Physicians, was closely involved with the group thereafter and in 1736 he became a fellow. He was knighted in 1748. He supported the argument that only people with degrees from Oxford or Cambridge should be allowed to practice medicine. This barred Scottish graduates, and a group of protesters forced his resignation as president of the Royal College. In his will he left three gold medals worth five guineas each to be given to undergraduates at Cambridge for Greek and Latin odes and epigrams. Most of his many writings - which included an unfinished version of the Book of Job-are in Latin. His "Epigram"-satirizing both Whigs and Tories-was written on the occasion of the presentation of Bishop Moore's library to the university of Cambridge by King George I.

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Faber Book of Comic Verse. Michael Roberts and Janet Adam Smith, eds. Faber and Faber, 1978. The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk).