Robert Campbell Garry OBE, MB, ChB, D.Sc., HonLLD, FRCPG was a former Professor of Physiology at the University of Glasgow.
He enrolled at 16 as a medical student at the University of Glasgow in 1917, during the First World War where medical expertise was greatly required. He graduated MB, ChB with Honours in 1922, also receiving the Brunton Memorial Prize for the most distinguished student of his year. His first stint as a physiologist was as an Assistant in the Institute of Physiology at the University of Glasgow. He was then promoted to a lectureship and he spent a sabbatical year at Freiburg in Germany, before being appointed Head of Physiology at the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen in 1933.
During this time he worked closely with the Director, John Boyd Orr in a very close partnership.
In 1935 he was invited by the Principal of the University of St Andrews, to take up the Chair of Physiology in University College, Dundee. ln 1947, he was invited back to his alma mater the University of Glasgow where he worked as Professor of Physiology until 1970.
He had a wide involvement in public service, in relation to the funding of research through the Medical Research Council and the Scottish Advisory Committee for Medical Research (now the Clinical and Biomedical Research Committee of the Chief Scientist's Office at SHHD).
He was a valued adviser to the Ministry of Defence in human adaptation to adverse environmental conditions, significantly contributing to the Flying Personnel Committee as a member, and later its chairman.
He served on the governing bodies of many important biological organisations, such as the Hannah Dairy Research Institute, the Hill Farming Research Organisation, the Glasgow College of Domestic Science and the Board of Management of Glasgow Western Hospitals. During this period he served also as editor of the Journal of Physiology.
His own personal research was in the field of autonomic control of the alimentary tract.
For his contributions, he has been recognised publically in many ways. He was given a D.Sc. by the University of Glasgow; he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1937, and of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. He was also invested as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE).