164 
OBITUABY. 
SIR GERMAN SIMS WOODHEAD, K.B.E., M.D., LL.D., 
F.R.S.(Edin.). 1855-1921. 
Professor of Pathology, University of Cambridge, 
(President of the Royal Microscopical Society, 1913-14-15). 
The death of Sir German Sims Woodhead, which occurred 
suddenly at Aisthorpe Hall, Lincolnshire, on Thursday, December 
29th, 1921, where he and Lady Woodhead were staying with 
friends, although not altogether unexpected, came as a shock to 
the scientific world. 
Woodhead was the eldest son of Joseph Woodhead (formerly 
M.P. for Spen Valley and editor of the “ Huddersfield Examiner”), 
and was born in April 1855. He was educated at Huddersfield 
College and Edinburgh University. He not only pursued the 
study of medicine with enthusiasm, but as a member, and later for 
many years President, of the University of Edinburgh Athletic 
Club, he found time to devote to sport — in which he made his 
mark as a sprinter of the front rank and a Rugby international, 
whilst in later years he was a keen golfer. 
He duly graduated M.B., C.M., in 1878, in which year he was 
the President of the Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh ; and 
three years later his M.D. thesis was awarded a gold medal. The 
following year he was elected E.R.C.P. of Edinburgh. He then 
proceeded abroad and pursued his studies for a short period in 
the Universities of Vienna and Berlin, and also in London. He 
returned to Edinburgh as Demonstrator of Anatomy and Physiology 
in an extra-mural school, a post he soon exchanged for that of 
Demonstrator of Pathology in the University itself, at the same 
time securing a research scholarship of the Grocers’ Company. 
In 1887 he was appointed Superintendent of the Royal College 
of Physicians of Edinburgh, a post he held until 1890, when he 
became the Director of the Laboratories of the Conjoint Board of 
the Royal Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons in London. Nine 
years later (1899) he was elected to succeed Professor Kanthack 
in the Chair of Pathology at Cambridge, a post lie held up to the 
time of his death. 
In all three of these appointments it fell to Woodhead’s lot to 
organise and equip the laboratories he was to occupy, and the 
