Gairdner, Sir William Tennant, K.C.B., was born in 1824, son of Dr John Gairdner (1790-1876), and nephew of William Gairdner (1793-1867), both of whom were born near Ayr and studied in Edinburgh—the latter (who wrote on gont) settling in London. He graduated M.D. at Edinburgh in 1845, becoming F.R.C.P. in 1850, and afterwards LL.D. of Edinburgh, and in 1898 K.C.B. From 1862 till his retirement in 1900 he occupied the chair of Practice of Medicine in
Glasgow University, was President of the Medical Association there in 1888, and is physician in ordinary to the Queen for Scotland. He has contributed many valuable papers to the special medical journals, and was an esteemed contributor to the first edition of this Encyclopædia. Among his books are Pathological Anatomy of Bronchitis and Diseases of the Lungs (1850), Notes on Pericarditis (1861), Clinical Medicine (1862), Public Health in relation to Air and Water (1862), On some Modern Aspects of Insanity, Lectures to Practitioners (in conjunction with Dr J. Coats, 1888), The Physician as Naturalist (1889).—JAMES GAIRDNER, historian, a brother of the foregoing, was born at Edinburgh, March 22, 1828, attended lectures in the university there, and at eighteen as a clerk entered the Public Record office in London, where he became assistant-keeper in 1859. He has distinguished himself by the rare combination of profound erudition, patient accuracy, and judicial temper which he has shown in the editing of a long series of historical documents: Memorials of Henry the Seventh (1858); Letters and Papers illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III. and Henry VII. (2 vols. 1861-63), in the Rolls series; the continuation from vol. v. onwards of the late Professor Brewer's Calendar of Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII. (9 vols. 1862-86); and Historical Collections of a London Citizen (1876), and Three Fifteenth-Century Chronicles (1880), for the Camden Society series. Equally valuable are the books addressed to a wider audience: an edition of the Paston Letters in Professor Arber's series (3 vols. 1872-75); The Houses of Lancaster and York, in 'Epochs of Modern History' (1874); the Life and Reign of Richard III. (1878); England in 'Early Chroniclers of Europe' (1879); Studies in English History (1881), a series of essays written in conjunction with Spedding; and Henry VII. ('Statesmen' series, 1889). He was made C.B. in 1900.