John Boyd Orr, 1st Baron Boyd-Orr, (23 September 1880 – 25 June 1971), styled Sir John Boyd Orr from 1935 to 1949, was a British teacher, medical doctor, biologist, nutritional physiologist, politician, businessman and farmer who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his scientific research into nutrition and his work as the first Director-General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
He was the co-founder and the first President (1960–1971) of the World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS). In 1945, he was elected President of the National Peace Council and was President of the World Union of Peace Organisations and the World Movement for World Federal Government.
Early life and family background
John Boyd Orr was born at Kilmaurs, near Kilmarnock, East Ayrshire, Scotland, the middle child in a family of seven children. His father, Robert Clark Orr, was a quarry owner, and a man of deep religious convictions, being a member of the Free Church of Scotland. His mother, Annie Boyd, was the daughter of another quarry master, wealthier than Robert Orr, and Past Master of a Masonic lodge.
He was taught to read at an early age by his widowed grandmother, who lived with the family. The family home was well supplied with books, and his father was widely read in political, sociological and metaphysical subjects, as well as religion. As he grew older, John would regularly discuss these subjects with his father, brothers, and visiting friends.
When he was five years old, the family suffered a setback when a ship owned by Robert Orr was lost at sea. They had to sell their home in Kilmaurs, and moved to West Kilbride, a village on the North Ayrshire coast. According to Kay, the new house and environment were a great improvement on Kilmaurs, despite the family's reduced means. The major part of his upbringing took place in and around West Kilbride. Apart from a four-month break at age thirteen, he attended the village school until age nineteen, the last four years as a pupil-teacher. Religion was then an important part of junior education in Scotland, and the school gave him a good knowledge of the Bible, which stayed with him for the rest of his life, though he would ultimately shed the religious beliefs of his childhood.
At the age of 13, Boyd Orr won a bursary to Kilmarnock Academy, a significant achievement as such bursaries were then rare. The new school was some 20 miles (32 km) from his home in West Kilbride, but his father owned a quarry about two miles (3 km) from the academy, and John was provided with accommodation nearby. His family cut short his education at the academy because, at the expense of his school attendance, he was spending time with the quarry workers, who let him work the machinery, and from whom he picked up a "wonderful vocabulary of swear words". After four months he returned to the village school in West Kilbride where he continued his education under the inspirational tutelage of Headmaster John G. Lyons. There he became a pupil teacher at a salary of £10 for the first year, and £20 for the second. This was a particularly demanding time for the young Boyd Orr, as in addition to his teaching duties, and studying at home for his university entrance and teacher-training qualifications, he also had to work every day in his father's business.
After four years as a pupil-teacher, at the age of 19, he won a Queen's Scholarship to study at a teacher training college in Glasgow, plus a bursary which paid for his lodgings there. The course required attending classes at the college, in addition to following the three-year Arts course, based on classics, at the university. As Boyd Orr had passed his university entrance examinations, the fees for the university were also covered. The university education was considered the more important part of the course.
Boyd Orr criticised the university course because the hard work required to pass the exams did not allow sufficient time to meet and to discuss with students of different social backgrounds. Away from home for the first time, it was at the University of Glasgow that Boyd Orr left behind the strict religious regime of his youth, later writing that Darwinian evolutionary theory broke the hold of biblical teachings.
First encounters with poverty and teaching career
As an undergraduate in Glasgow, he explored the interior of the city, usually at weekends. He was shocked by what he found in the poverty-stricken slums and tenements, which then made up a large part of the city. Rickets was obvious among the children, malnutrition (in some cases, associated with drunkenness) was shown by many of the adults, and many of the aged were destitute. In his first teaching job after graduating MA in 1902, he was posted to a school in the slums. His first class was overcrowded and the children ill-fed or actually hungry, inadequately clothed, infested with lice and physically wretched. He resigned after a few days since he realised that he could not teach children in such a condition and that there was nothing he could do to relieve their misery.
After working for a few months in his father's business, he taught for three years at Kyleshill School in Saltcoats, also a poor area, but less squalid than the slums of Glasgow. Boyd Orr needed to augment his teacher's salary, and decided to do so by instructing an evening class in book-keeping and accountancy. After intensive study he passed the necessary examinations, and duly instructed his class. The knowledge and skills he learned by studying for and teaching this class were to prove useful in his later career.
Boyd Orr realised that his heart was not in teaching, and after fulfilling his teaching obligations under the terms of his Queen's Scholarship, he returned to the university to study biology, a subject he had always been interested in since childhood. As a precaution, he entered simultaneously for a degree in medicine.
He found the university to be a stimulating environment. Diarmid Noel Paton (son of the artist Joseph Noel Paton) was Regius Professor of Physiology, and Edward Provan Cathcart head of Physiological Chemistry, both men of outstanding scientific ability. He was impressed by Samson Gemmell, Professor of Clinical Medicine, a philosopher whose deep thinking on social affairs also influenced Boyd Orr's approach to such questions.
Half-way through his medical studies, his savings ran out. Reluctant to ask his family for support, he bought a block of tenanted flats on mortgage, with the help of a bank overdraft, and used the rents to pay for the rest of his studies. On graduating, he sold the property for a small profit.
He graduated with a BSc in 1910, and MB ChB in 1912, at the age of 32, placing sixth in a year of 200 students. Two years later, in 1914, he graduated MD with honours, receiving the Bellahouston Gold Medal for the most distinguished thesis of the year.
On leaving the university, he took a position as a ship's surgeon on a ship trading between Scotland and West Africa, choosing this job because it offered the possibility of paying off his bank overdraft faster than any other. He resigned after four months, when he had repaid the debt. He then tried general practice, working as a locum in the practice of his family doctor in Saltcoats, and was offered a partnership there. Realising that a career in medicine was not for him, he instead accepted the offer of a two-year Carnegie research scholarship, to work in E. P. Cathcart's laboratory. The work he began there covered malnutrition, protein and creatine metabolism, the effect of water intake on nitrogenous metabolism in humans, and the energy expenditure of military recruits in training.
The beginnings of the Rowett Research Institute