John Gordon Harrower

{{Short description|Scottish anatomist}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=February 2018}}

{{Use British English|date=February 2018}}

John Gordon Harrower FRSE FRCSE (1890–1936) was a Scottish anatomist. He was an expert on the human skull, and classified many separate Asiatic types.

Harrower was born on 4 April 1890 in Glasgow the son of John Harrower in Langside in the south of the city. He won a scholarship to Allan Glen's School and was educated alongside contemporaries such as John Vernon Harrison. Initially training primarily in mathematics and electricity, in 1910 he obtained a senior post at Glasgow Tramways Power Station, which he retained until 1919.{{cite web| url = https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0370164600015078| title = Reference at www.cambridge.org}}

His interested shifted from electricity to radiology, and he retrained as a physician. He attended night school at the Royal Technical College in Glasgow and graduated MB ChB in 1913 and gained his doctorate in 1918. In 1919 he became a Demonstrator (dissecting bodies in front of students during anatomy lectures) at Glasgow University. In 1922 he was given a professorship to teach anatomy at the Singapore Medical College. In 1925 he was granted his DSc from the University of Edinburgh for his thesis A Study of the Hokien and the Tamil Skull,{{Cite book|last=Harrower|first=John Gordon|url=http://hdl.handle.net/1842/34636|title=A study of the Hokien and the Tamil skull|publisher=|year=1925|isbn=|location=|pages=|hdl=1842/34636}} sampled from coolies originated from Tamil and Southern Fujian in Singapore, became a commonly cited source in Chinese literature as the dimensions of the skulls of "modern Southern Chinese".{{cite journal|last=颜誾|title=大汶口新石器时代人骨的研究报告|journal=考古学报|date=1972|issue=1|page=112}} In 1926 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Thomas Hastie Bryce, Sir John Graham Kerr, Diarmid Noel Paton, and Ralph Stockman.{{cite book|title=Biographical Index of Former Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1783–2002|date=July 2006|publisher=The Royal Society of Edinburgh|isbn=0-902-198-84-X|url=https://www.royalsoced.org.uk/cms/files/fellows/biographical_index/fells_indexp1.pdf|access-date=5 October 2016|archive-date=24 January 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130124115814/http://www.royalsoced.org.uk/cms/files/fellows/biographical_index/fells_indexp1.pdf|url-status=dead}}

He died in Singapore on 9 April 1936, a few days after his 46th birthday.Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser 10 April 1936