GOODSIR, JOHN (1814-1867), Scottish anatomist, was born at Anstruther, Fife, on March 2o, 1814. He was educated at St. Andrews, and at Edinburgh, and in 1835 joined his father in practice at Anstruther. Three years later he communi cated to the British Association a paper on the pulps and sacs of the human teeth, and about the same date, on the nomination of Edward Forbes, be was elected to the famous coterie called the "Universal Brotherhood of the Friends of Truth," which com prised artists, scholars, naturalists and others, whose relationship became a potent influence in science. With Forbes he worked at marine zoology, but human anatomy, pathology and morphology formed his chief study. In 184o he moved to Edinburgh, where he was appointed conservator of the museum of the College of Surgeons, in succession to William Macgillivray. In his lectures in the theatre of the college in 1842-43 he insisted on the im portance of the cell as a centre of nutrition, and pointed out that the organism is subdivided into a number of departments. R. Virchow recognized his indebtedness to these discoveries by dedicating his Cellular Pathologie to Goodsir, as "one of the earliest and most acute observers of cell-life." In 1843 Goodsir became curator in the University of Edinburgh ; then demonstra tor of anatomy, and in 1845 curator of the entire museum. A year later he was elected to the chair of anatomy in the university. He died at Wardie near Edinburgh, on March 6, 1867.
See Anatomical Memoirs of John Goodsir, F.R.S., edited by W. Turner, with Memoir by H. Lonsdale (Edinburgh, 1868) ; Proc. Roy. Soc., vol. iv. (1868) ; Trans. Bot. Soc. Edin., vol. ix. (1868) .