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Sir James Black
Sir James Whyte Black, OM, FRS, FRSE, FRCP
(Born Uddingston, 14 June 1924. Died London, 22 March 2010)
Our second exhibition featured the family history of Sir James Black OM. Sir James was one of the world's outstanding medical scientists, renowned as the developer of beta-blockers, of treatment for ulcers, and of other important therapeutic drugs in everyday use around the world. In 1988 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.
Sir James' ancestry
James Black's family were coalminers for at least five generations - his father was working at the coal face, aged just 13, like his great-uncle Hugh. Coalmining and the mining communities were a major feature of the exhibition. Sir James explained "I have never wanted to check out the family folklore that we could be traced back to a dominie at the hamlet of Balquhidder in the Scottish Highlands". In the exhibition this family tale was put to the test, his mother's roots in Highland Perthshire were explored, and we also unearthed an ancestor's surprise occupation. The exhibition also used the story of Sir James's mother's ancestors to highlight life in rural Highland communities at the turn of the 19th century, where small farmers, often Gaelic speakers, struggled to retain their tenancies in the face of a drive for agricultural improvement.
The photograph on the left shows a Black family picnic from about 1932, with James seated front centre.
Image: Private Collection
The photograph on the right shows miners beside a conveyor at Wellesley Colliery, Fife, 1950s-1960s
SCOTLANDSIMAGES.COM / Crown Copyright 2009 the National Archives of Scotland AAA00310.
1891 census
The document on the left is the 1891 census return showing James Black's great grandparents, Walter and Agnes Black, living in Old Monkland, Lanarkshire (click to enlarge).
Their son Hugh, aged 13, 'assists father in pit'.General Register Office for Scotland, Census 1891, 652/01 006/01 039
Images of Sir James's exhibition
Sir James visited the Centre on Wednesday 15 April 2009 to view the Famous Scots exhibition - coincidentally the day chosen by a previous subject, one Billy Connolly. Photographs of Sir James' visit are reproduced with kind permission of the photographer, Rob McDougall.
A partnership between the National Records of Scotland and the Court of the Lord Lyon© Crown copyright
