Our warmest congratulations to Dr. Kenneth McHardy, friend of the club, on the successful publication of a refreshed edition of J.J.R. Macleod, Co-Discoverer of Insulin by Michael J. Williams. The new edition is out November 5 and will be celebrated at a book launch in Aberdeen on November 10, 2026.
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Its publication makes the work available once again to historians, researchers and, indeed, anyone else with an interest in insulin which is after all, currently being used by up to 200 million individuals worldwide.
Kenneth Mchardy, Introduction
Michael Williams’s biography is the only comprehensive account of Macleod’s life. It was initially published in 1993 in a single print run as a supplement to the Proceedings of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and unfortunately became largely inaccessible to a wider audience. Through Ken McHardy’s unceasing efforts, this volume has now been published by Aberdeen University Press in a handsome edition featuring an excellent new introduction by McHardy.
In his introduction, McHardy describes the efforts made to restore Macleod’s reputation, beginning with Michael Bliss’s best-selling The Discovery of Insulin and continuing on to many new publications, lectures and symposia in recent decades. Our club is pleased to have contributed to this effort with our Macleod Workshop in 2022, the publication of “J.J.R. Macleod, Reconsidered: Insulin and Beyond” in 2023, and the Toronto Four Symposium & Celebration in Aberdeen in 2024.
In the photograph above, Ken McHardy visits the JJR Macleod Memorial Statue in Aberdeen’s Duthie Park to let Jack see the new volume. “I think he approved despite waiting such a long time!” McHardy says.
