Monro, Alexander (1697-1767)

English-born anatomist who helped to found the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and to make Edinburgh one of the key centres for medical teaching in Europe.

Monro primus was born in London, the son of a prominent surgeon, and studied medicine in London, Paris, and Leiden before settling in Edinburgh first as a lecturer in anatomy, then as the professor of anatomy 1725-59. He was an enthusiastic, well-organized, and immensely popular teacher who, at the start of his career, had only 57 students in his anatomy class but several hundred by the time of his retirement.

He trained his son Monro secundus, who succeed Monro primus at the age of 21, thereby continuing a period of 120 years in which Munros ran anatomy teaching at Edinburgh Medical School.