Malcolm Davenport Milne

Malcolm Davenport Milne (1915–1991) was an English physician and nephrologist.

Biography
After education at Stockport School, Milne matriculated at the University of Manchester, where he graduated BSc in 1936 and MB ChB (Manch.) in 1939. During WWII he was a regimental medical officer. From 1940 to 1946 he served in a field ambulance with the 8th Army in North Africa and then Italy. In 1943 for his service in Tunisia he was mentioned in dispatches.

"After the war he returned to Manchester where, as lecturer in medicine, he collaborated with Douglas Black in experiments on potassium depletion, carried out on themselves."

He qualified MRCP in 1947 and graduated MD in 1951.

"By the early 1950s Malcolm Milne's reputation as a physician and clinical scientist was growing fast, and in 1952 he was invited by Professor John McMichael to join his remarkable team at the Postgraduate Medical School."

From 1952 to 1961 Milne worked at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School.

"There he was able to develop his interest in metabolic disorders and renal medicine and he published a series of important papers of which the most significant, in his own view, was that on the excretion of weak acids and bases."

"In the 1950s and '60s journals were peppered with his contributions. One piece with which Milne was pleased was his clarification of the tyramine monoamine-oxidase inhibitor interaction (the “cheese reaction”). ... His substantial reputation would have been enhanced further if he could have had the then undescribed aldosterone assayed from a hypokalaemic, alkalotic, hypertensive woman. He postulated its presence but had no method to detect an excess of a sodium retaining hormone. The following year the same patient consulted a Dr Conn."

In 1961 Milne was appointed to the chair of medicine at the Westminster Hospital Medical School, where he retired in 1981. There he was a clinician and teacher and continued his research on metabolic disorders. He was an internationally recognized authority on disorders of amino-acid transport.

In 1941 in Stockport, Cheshire he married Mary Thorpe. They became the parents of a son and a daughter.

Awards and honours

 * 1958 — FRCP
 * 1963 — Bradshaw Lecturer on Disorders of amino-acid transport
 * 1976 — Lumleian Lecturer on Transport defects in disease
 * 1978 — FRS
 * 1981 — Baly Medal