John B. Harman
British physician
John Bishop Harman, FRCS, FRCP (10 August 1907 – 13 November 1994) was a British physician, president of the Medical Defence Union and chairman of the British National Formulary. He was also notable as a medical expert witness for the defence in the trial of suspected serial killer John Bodkin Adams. His daughter, Harriet Harman, is a senior Labour Party politician.
Early life
Harman was born at 108 Harley Street, the heart of medical London, and practised and lived there his whole life. His father, Nathaniel Harman, trained as a Baptist minister but having gained a double first at Cambridge instead became an ophthalmic consultant. His mother was Katherine Chamberlain, a niece of Liberal politician Joseph Chamberlain, and thus cousin to Conservative Party Foreign Secretary Austen Chamberlain and Conservative Party Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Katherine also qualified as a doctor but devoted herself to her family instead of practising. Both his parents were committed Unitarians, his mother by birth and his father by conversion before marriage; his mother gave a substantial sum of money towards the reconstruction of the headquarters building known as Essex Hall. His eldest sibling grew up to be a historian and writer, best known under her married name as Elizabeth Pakenham, Countess of Longford.
Harman went to Oundle School, where he was very left-wing.
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This entry incorporates text from “John B. Harman” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.