Introduction
Sir George Andreas Berry FRSE LLD (6 October 1853 – 18 June 1940) was a world-leading eye surgeon and Scottish Unionist politician.
He was elected as Member of Parliament MP for the Combined Scottish Universities at the 1922 general election, and held the seat until he stood down at the 1931 general election.
Life
He was the son of Walter Berry of Glenstriven FRSE (d.1904), the Danish Consul General for Scotland. He was educated at Marlborough College in Wiltshire before studying Medicine at Edinburgh University.
He was a famous ophthalmologist and wrote a textbook Diseases of the Eye (1893) that was widely used in the U.K. and U.S.A. In 1889, Berry published a description of a case of Treacher Collins syndrome (sometimes called Berry-Treacher Collins syndrome).
In 1893 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Alexander Crum Brown, William Rutherford, Sir Thomas Richard Fraser and Sir Stair Agnew.
In the First World War he was in charge of Optical Surgery in the 2nd Scottish General Hospital (now the Edinburgh Western General).
Berry is buried with his wife, Dame Agnes Jean Berry (née Muir), whom he married in 1883. The grave lies on the concealed southern terrace, at Dean Cemetery in western Edinburgh.
Notable Positions Held
- Co-founder of the Ophthalmological Society of UK, 1880, President 1910-11
- President of the British Medical Association 1905
- Elected Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1881, serving as President, 1910-12
- Head of Ophthalmic Surgery for Scotland during the First World War (serving at Craiglockhart Hospital)
- Vice President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1919-22