Donald Mainland


Prof Donald Mainland FRSE FRSC was a Scots-born medical statistician who became a Professor at the University of New York. He is remembered for his series of Mainland's Notes.

Life

He was born in Edinburgh in 1902, the son of William Mainland, a confectioner running a shop at 140 St Stephen Street in the Stockbridge area.
He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh graduating with an MB ChB and gaining a doctorate in 1930. He was a lecturer in anatomy at the University of Edinburgh and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1938. His proposers were Ernest Cruickshank, James Couper Brash, Alfred Joseph Clark and Ivan De Burgh Daly. He resigned from the Society in 1965.
In 1949 he emigrated to Nova Scotia to take on the role of Professor of Anatomy at Dalhousie University. His personality clashed with his junior colleague, Dr Richard Holbourne Saunders and one year later he was appointed Professor of Biostatics in the Department of Preventative Medicine at the Bellevue Hospital Medical College in New York City in the United States. In 1953 he moved to the Department of Medical Statistics as its Chairman.

Publications