{{Infobox rai-fellow

| first_name = John

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John Brownlee qualified in mathematics, natural philosophy and medicine at the University of Glasgow. He worked in Guernsey and Glasgow establishing a reputation as an expert in infectious diseases, and in the application<br />of statistics and mathematics to medicine. From 1914, Brownlee ran the Statistical Department of the Central Research Institute. This expanded during the War to deal with Army Medical Statistics, including creation of an enormous card index of casualties and sickness which later became indispensable to the Pensions Ministry. John Brownlee was a central figure in the development of epidemiology and of medical statistics.<br />In July 1914 Dr John Brownlee was appointed head of the Statistical Department of the newly established Medical Research Committee. He had qualified in mathematics, natural philosophy and medicine at the University of Glasgow, and by 1914 had established a reputation as a public health officer, an expert in infectious diseases, and as a proponent of the Pearsonian school of the application of statistics and mathematics to medicine: an ideal background for his new position. In celebration of the centenary anniversary of the Medical Research Council and as a tribute to John Brownlee’s involvement at the start, the International Journal of Epidemiology is reprinting in this issue one of his early papers on genetics. We comment on this paper, as well as Brownlee’s background, achievements, research and his somewhat enigmatic though likeable character.<br />