Aldren Turner was born at Edinburgh, the son of Sir William Turner, K.C.B, F.R.S, principal of Edinburgh University from 1903 to 1916, and his wife Agnes, daughter of Abraham Logan of Burnhouses, Berwickshire. He was educated at Fettes College, before entering the University as a medical student. He graduated as M.B., C.M., with first-class honours, in 1887, and then completed a term as house physician at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. He next made postgraduate studies at Berlin and St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London. In 1892 he was appointed assistant to Ferrier and demonstrator, and then lecturer, in neuro-pathology at King’s College, London. In 1899 he was elected assistant physician to King’s College Hospital, and nine years later physician in charge of neurological cases and lecturer on neurology. For six years he was also on the staff of the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic. In 1907 he published Epilepsy, a Study of the Idiopathic Disease, and in 1910, with Grainger Stewart, a Textbook of Nervous Diseases. During the first Great War he served in France and, from 1915 to 1919, as neurologist to the Home Forces. He was created C.B. in 1917. From 1919 to 1943 he acted as neurologist to the War Office Medical Board and from 1930 to 1943 as consultant adviser to the Ministry of Pensions. In 1910 Turner gave the Morison lecture at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, and in 1918 the Bradshaw Lecture at the Royal College of Physicians in London. He made an excellent chairman of committees, methodical and lucid, and the same qualities distinguished his teaching. He had an extensive knowledge of London and its history and of British and Continental spas. He was also interested in antiques and owned a fine collection of old prints. He married in 1909 Helen Mary Mackenzie, third daughter of Dr. J. A. MacDougall, and had three sons, one of whom is J. W. Aldren Turner, F.R.C.P. He died in Edinburgh.

G H Brown

[Lancet, 1945; B.M.J., 1945; Times, 31 July 1945; Lyle, 414]