John Berry HaycraftFRSE (bapt. 15 March 1857 – 30 December 1922) was a British physician and professor inphysiology who carried out important medical research.^[1]

John Haycraft was born inLewes,East Sussex,England, in 1857, the son of actuary John Berry Haycraft. His younger brother was SirThomas Haycraft, a judge in theBritish Colonial Service.^[2]

He received his medical education at theUniversity of Edinburgh, where he gained anMD on the history, development, and function of the carapace of the chelonia^[3] and also a DSc in public health in 1888.^[4] He worked for a time inLudwig's laboratory inLeipzig.

In 1880, he was elected a Fellow of theRoyal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers werePeter Guthrie Tait,William Rutherford,Sir William Turner, andSir Thomas Richard Fraser.^[5]

In 1881, he was appointed chair of physiology atMason College (which later became theUniversity of Birmingham). He taught in Birmingham and attracted many students to the city. During his years in Birmingham and Edinburgh, Haycraft had been actively engaged in research and published papers on thecoagulation ofblood and in 1884, he discovered that theleech secreted a powerfulanticoagulant, which he namedhirudin, although it was not isolated until the 1950s, nor its structure fully determined until 1976.

Haycraft returned toLondon in 1892 and was appointed a researchscholar of theBritish Medical Association.

In 1893, he was appointed chair of physiology atUniversity College, Cardiff, where he worked until retirement in 1920. Haycraft died three years later.^[6]

He died inRoyston, Hertfordshire on 30 December 1922.^[1][7]

He married Lily Charlotte Isabel Lillie Stacpoole, sister ofHenry De Vere Stacpoole.John Stacpoole Haycraft was his grandson.

• "Upon the Cause of the Striation of Voluntary Muscular Tissue",Proceedings of the Royal Society of London (1854-1905). 1 January 1880, 31:360–379
• "A New Hypothesis concerning Vision",Proceedings of the Royal Society of London (1854-1905). 1 January 1893, 54:272–274
• "On the Action of a Secretion Obtained from the Medicinal Leech on the Coagulation of the Blood",Proceedings of the Royal Society of London (1854-1905), 1 January 1883, 36:478–487
• Darwinism and Race Progress, London: Scribner, 1895. (Previously published inThe Lancet.)
• The Human Body. A Physiology Reader for Schools, London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1902.

• 1857 births
• 1922 deaths
• People from Lewes
• Academics of Cardiff University
• Academics of the University of Birmingham
• Alumni of the University of Edinburgh
• British physiologists
• Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh

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