Abstract
ROBERT WALKER GRAY, born at Peterhead, Aber-deenshire, in 1864, came of whaling stock. His grandfather and his father were well-known skippers in the Peterhead whaling fleet, and the latter, doubtless inspired by the example of the Scoresbys, made many records of his observations in the Arctic seas. David Gray's “Notes on the Greenland Whale” appeared in annual reports of the Scottish Fishery Board and elsewhere, accounts of the year's whaling in the Buchan Observer, and Southwell made use of some of his information in his articles on sealing and whaling. It was natural, therefore, that one of the sustained interests of the son, R. W. Gray, should be in whales and whaling. His name appears in the roll-book of the natural history class at the University of Edinburgh for the session 1887-88, when he was in his twenty-third year, and he graduated in medicine at that University in 1892. Having already made several voyages to the Greenland Sea, he became surgeon upon his father's whaler, Eclipse, at a time when the Peterhead whaling was all but extinguished, and his subsequent experience included voyages with the Orient Line as medical officer, the study of sleeping sickness in Africa, and a long period of general practice in towns on the south coast of England.
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RITCHIE, J. Dr. R. W. Gray. Nature 152, 241 (1943). https://doi.org/10.1038/152241b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/152241b0