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Lord
John Boyd Orr of Scotland
Nobel Peace Prize Winner
LORD BOYD ORR OF BRECHIN
John Boyd Orr (September
23, 1880-June 25, 1971) was born in Kilmaurs,
Ayrshire, Scotland. His father, R. C. Orr, was a pious and intelligent
man
whose sudden enthusiasms led to frequent reversals of fortune, but,
although
his finances were often depleted, he and his wife and their seven
children
enjoyed a pleasant life in their rural community. Having begun his
education
in the village school, John at the age of thirteen was sent to
Kilmarnock Academy, twenty miles away, but he was more interested in the life of the navvies
and quarrymen who worked in his father's quarry than in his education and so
was returned to the village school. There he became a member of the staff as
a «pupil teacher», earning £20 a year by the time he was eighteen.
Aided by scholarships, he
was able to attend simultaneously a teachers'
training college and Glasgow University. Of these student days he says
in his
autobiography that he worked hard in the arts curriculum but that his
most
vivid recollections are of the sights and sounds of the old Glasgow
slums which he would prowl on Saturday nights(1).
Finding the three years
he spent teaching in a secondary school neither
financially profitable nor intellectually satisfying, he returned to
Glasgow
University in 1905, enrolling for a degree in medicine and for one in
the
biological sciences. Degrees in hand in record time, he served as a
ship's
surgeon for four months and for six weeks as a replacement for a
vacationing
doctor, but he forsook the practice of medicine for research, accepting
a
two-year Carnegie research fellowship in physiology.
On April 1, 1914, Dr.
Boyd Orr arrived in Aberdeen to assume direction of the
Nutrition Institute, only to be told that there was no Institute in
reality,
only an approved scheme of research. Within a month, Boyd Orr had drawn
up
plans for an impressive research facility, too impressive, indeed, to be
financed. The compromise he made is symbolic of the nature of the man:
he was willing to delay the building of the total structure provided that the
first wing be made of granite, not of wood as originally suggested.
His work was interrupted
by World War I during which he served first in the
Royal Army Medical Corps, earning two decorations for bravery in action,
then
in the Royal Navy, and finally, simultaneously in both, for he was
loaned by
the Navy to the Army to do research in military dietetics.
After the war Boyd Orr
returned to the Institute and in the next decade or
so, put to work a hitherto unsuspected talent for money raising. The
first
new building of Rowett Research Institute - the name now given to the
Institute in honor of a major donor - was dedicated by Queen Mary in
1922;
there followed the Walter Reid Library in 1923-1924, the thousand-acre
John
Duthie Webster Experimental Farm in 1925, Strathcona House, to
accommodate research workers and visiting scientists, in 1930. In 1931 he founded
and became editor of Nutrition Abstracts and Reviews.
Time-consuming as his
various administrative duties were, he was still able
to direct fundamental research in nutrition, primarily in animal
nutrition in
these early days of the Institute. His influential Minerals in Pastures
and
Their Relation to Animal Nutrition (1929) was published in this period.
During the 1930's, however, after extensive experiments with milk in the
diet
of mothers, children, and the underprivileged, and after large-scale
surveys
of nutritional problems in many nations throughout the world, Boyd Orr's
interests swung to human nutrition, not only as a researcher but also as
a
propagandist for healthful diets for all peoples everywhere. His report
of
1936, Food, Health and Income, revealed the «appalling amount of
malnutrition» among the people of England regardless of economic
status(2) and became the basis for the later British policy on food during World War
II,
which he helped to formulate as a member of Churchill's Scientific
Committee
on Food Policy.
At war's end, Boyd Orr,
aged sixty-five, retired from Rowett Institute, but
accepted three new positions: a three-year term as rector of Glasgow University, a seat in the Commons
representing the Scottish universities, and the post of director-general
of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Boyd Orr found his work
with the FAO exasperating because of the FAO's lack of authority and funds, but he energetically pursued every avenue for
improving the world production and equitable distribution of food. In
1946,
under the aegis of the FAO, he set up an International Emergency Food
Council, with thirty-four member nations, to meet the postwar food
crisis. He
traveled extensively throughout the world trying to get support for a
comprehensive food plan and was bitterly disappointed when his proposal
for
the establishment of a World Food Board failed in 1947 when neither
Britain
nor the United States would vote for it.
Believing that the FAO
could not, at that point, become a spearhead for a
movement to achieve world unity and peace, Boyd Orr resolved to resign
as
director-general and to go into business. Within three years he earned a
bigger net income from directorships than he had ever had from
scientific
research, and with capital gains made on the Stock Exchange, he
established a comfortable personal estate. It was symbolic of this period of his life
that
he should have been informed of his Nobel Peace Prize award by his
banker.
The prize money, however, he donated to the National Peace Council, the
World Movement for World Federal Government, and various other such
organizations.
In the years following
the Second World War, Boyd Orr was associated with
virtually every organization that has agitated for world government, in
many
instances devoting his considerable administrative and propagandistic
skills
to the cause.«The most important question today», he says in his
autobiography, «is whether man has attained the wisdom to adjust the
old
systems to suit the new powers of science and to realize that we are now
one
world in which all nations will ultimately share the same fate. (3)
John Boyd Orr, himself a
scientist-adjuster of old systems, died at his home
in Scotland in June, 1971, at the age of ninety.
1. John Boyd Orr, As I
Recall, p. 42.
2. Ibid., pp. 114-118.
3. Ibid., p. 288.
Books by Lord John Boyd Orr
History of the Scottish
Church Crisis of 1904
Minerals in Pastures and
their Relations to Animal Nutrition (1928)
Food, Health, and Income
(1936)
Feeding the People in
Wartime (1940)
Fighting for What (1943)
Food and the People
(1944)
The White Man's Dilemma
(1952)
What's Happening in China
(1959 with Peter Townsend)
Feast and Famine (1960)
Selected Bibliography
Boyd Orr, Lord John, As I
Recall, with an Introduction by Ritchie Calder.
London, MacGibbon & Kee, 1966.
Boyd Orr, Lord John,
Fighting for What? London, Macmillan, 1942.
Boyd Orr, Lord John, Food
and the People. London, Pilot Press, 1943.
Boyd Orr, Lord John,
Food, Health and Income. London, Macmillan, 1936.
Boyd Orr, Lord John,
Food: The Foundation of World Unity. London, National
Peace Council, 1948.
Boyd Orr, Lord John,
International Liaison Committee of Organizations for
Peace: A New Strategy of Peace. London, National Peace Council, 1950.
Boyd Orr, Lord John,
Minerals in Pastures and Their Relation to Animal
Nutrition. London, Lewis, 1929.
Boyd Orr, Lord John, The
National Food Supply and Its Influence on National
Health. London, King, 1934.
Boyd Orr, Lord John, «Nutritional
Science and State Planning», in What
Science Stands For, ed. by John Boyd Orr et al. London, Allen &
Unwin, 1937.
Boyd Orr, Lord John, The
White Man's Dilemma: Food and the Future. With the
cooperation of David Lubbock. London, Allen & Unwin, 1953. (2nd ea.,
1964.)
Boyd Orr, Lord John, The
Wonderful World of Food: The Substance of Life.
Garden City, N.Y., Garden City Books, 1958.
Boyd Orr, Lord John, and
David Lubbock, Feeding the People in Wartime.
London, Macmillan, 1940.
Calder, Ritchie, «The
Man and his Message», in Food for a Hungry World, a
special issue of Survey Graphic, 37 (March, 1948) 99-104.
Current Biography, 7
(1946). New York, Wilson.
Hambidge,
Gove, The Story
of FAO. New York, Van Nostrand, 1955.
Vries, Eva de, Life and
Work of Sir John Boyd Orr. Wageningen, The
Netherlands, Veenman, 1948.
From Nobel Lectures,
Peace 1926-1950.
John Boyd Orr's
Genealogy
Generation No. 1
1. UNKNOWN1 Orr
Children of UNKNOWN Orr
are:
2. i. ANN2 ORR, b. 1845, Lochwinnoch, Renfrew, Scotland.
3. ii. R. C. ORR.
Generation No. 2
2. ANN2 ORR
(UNKNOWN1) was born 1845 in Lochwinnoch, Renfrew, Scotland. She
married MALCOLM CAMPBELL FULTON July 02, 1868 in Lochwinnoch, Renfrew,
Scotland, son of JOHN FULTON and MARGARET CAMPBELL. He was born
March 27,1836 in Beith, Ayr, Scotland.
Children of ANN ORR and
MALCOLM FULTON are:
i. ANN3 FULTON, b. April 09, 1869, Middle or
New Parish, Greenock,
Renfrew, Scotland.
4. ii. JAMES ORR FULTON, b. August 30, 1871, Middle-East-West
Parishes,
Greenock, Renfrew, Scotland; d. January 25, 1938, Cleveland, Cuyahoga,
Ohio.
iii. MARGARET FULTON, b. December
29, 1874, Middle or New Parish,
Greenock, Renfrew, Scotland.
iv. JOHN FULTON, b. September 16, 1873,
Middle-East-West Parishes,
Greenock, Rewfrew, Scotland.
3. R. C.2 ORR
(UNKNOWN1) He married UNKNOWN BOYD.
Children of R. ORR and
UNKNOWN BOYD are:
i. UNKNOWN3 ORR.
ii. UNKNOWN ORR.
iii. UNKNOWN ORR.
iv. UNKNOWN ORR.
v. UNKNOWN ORR.
vi. UNKNOWN ORR.
vii. JOHN BOYD ORR, b. September
23, 1880, Klimaurs, Ayrshire,
Scotland; d. June 25, 1971, Scotland; m. ELIZABETH PEARSON CALLUM.
Generation No. 3
4. JAMES ORR3
FULTON (ANN2 ORR, UNKNOWN1) was born August 30, 1871 in Middle-East-West
Parishes, Greenock, Renfrew, Scotland, and died January 25,1938 in
Cleveland, Cuyahoga, Ohio. He married CLARA MIDDLETON in Sierra
Leona, West Africa, daughter of JOHN MIDDLETON and ELIZABETH CUNDY.
She was born May 26, 1877 in Lancashire, England (Liverpool), and died
April 26, 1948 in Cleveland, Cuyahoga, Ohio.
Thanks to
JamesJoy97@aol.com
James is searching for more information on
John Boyd Orr's Aunt, Ann Fulton.
Boyd
Orr Web Site
Orr's
of Annandale Farm, Kilmaurs parish
NOTE:
Use this data as a finding tool, just as you would any other secondary
source. When you find the name of an ancestor listed, confirm the facts
in original sources.
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